


The Europa Affair

by lifeaftermeteor



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aliens, BAMF!Quatre, Crossover, Gen, M/M, Science Fiction, liberal usage of expletives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5409851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeaftermeteor/pseuds/lifeaftermeteor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Europa, the smallest of Jupiter's Galilean moons, is home to a small colonial outpost. 300 souls, selected by the Winner-Yosefi terraforming joint venture, to convert the frozen landscape into something habitable for human life. But following a vague transmission, the colony has gone dark. Suspecting foul play, Winner and his business partner reach out to garner support of the Preventer Corps - the Earth Sphere's all-purpose, unbiased watchdogs of peace and security - to investigate. The organization acquiesces to the request and sponsors a small team of elite agents, expecting the matter to be an easily open-and-shut case of far-flung colonial violence and piracy. What waits for them at the colony, however, goes far beyond even their wildest expectations...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> First attempt at a NaNoWriMo, which only got me just passed 32k. Although I've had a GWxAliens crossover in my head for several years, it was [Danyellser's fanart](http://blaze-bernatt.deviantart.com/gallery/47671031/Gundam-Wing) of Quatre vs. a xenomorph (and peer pressure) that tipped me over into actually writing it. Many thanks go to [maevemauvaise](http://maevemauvaise.tumblr.com/) for kindly offering to be my beta reader - very much obliged.
> 
> Hope ya'll enjoy the ride~~!

Dusk was coming to Europa, and with it came the dark and the cold. 

Jorden Pax wrapped his arms tighter around his thin frame and tucked his chin down against his neck, seeking the little warmth that filtered up through his coat. They never really told you about the cold when they recruited you. Bringing breathable air to a hunk of frozen rock millions of miles from the Sun was no easy task. Years, it took. Years of closely monitored scientific seeding of an atmosphere that was barely there to begin with. But even after the atmosphere took – _if_ it took – you still had to heat the damn thing before it was considered truly suitable for human life.

“Building better worlds,” they told you. Some new Manifest Destiny, the inevitable future of mankind, built on the backs of grunts like himself.

He, like so many others after the war, had fled the terrestrial familiarity of the Earth Sphere entirely, first to Mars and then onward to ever more distant satellites, but whether they were running _from_ or running _to_ , he’d never really known.

He’d been there when they’d switched her on, so they say – when Europa’s atmosphere had gotten its stamp of approval – but they had a long way to go before he’d be enjoying a drink on the beach. The bitch was cold, damn cold, and would remain so until they could cook her proper.

But they’d been thwarted repeatedly in their attempts. The new atmosphere was a volatile thing, and storms unlike anything he’d seen plowed across the surface, taking with them sensors and equipment and human beings alike. They’d all expected it – many were Mars veterans like himself – but when the pace of progress slowed to a crawl, men tended to get _nasty_. 

He’d nearly thrown in the towel at the most recent of delays, beaten down and exhausted. Nearly had abandoned this half-life of a terra-former when a call came in: orders from above. He and three others had reported to the satellite’s chief of operations, who at the time had been flanked by their lead medical and scientific officers, and a suspiciously out of place man in a gray business suit.

The suit had made him and the others sign some bogus paperwork – with which Pax had been sure he’d signed away his soul – before explaining why they’d been summoned. A side job, an extension to his contract…sweetened by a handsome sum if he held up his end of the deal, which consisted almost entirely of absolute silence.

Pax and the others had apparently been recommended by the chief for their reliability, discretion, and their apparent lack of social trappings. ‘Convenient,’ was the word that came to Pax’s mind at the time and it left a sour taste in his mouth. But the break in routine promised a respite from the growing impatience with this frozen hunk of rock he currently called home.

Their mission was easy enough, beamed down from an invisible hand 390.4 million miles away: 

Investigate signal.  
Report required. Samples encouraged.  
Tell no one.

And so now he sat in the cabin of one of the makeshift colony’s rovers, staring out into the coming darkness, the moon’s newfound wind whipping across the frozen plains, buffeting the small outpost.

Sitting in the driver’s seat next to him was a grizzled former sweeper, who went only by Meyer. The man rapped impatiently on the rover’s steering wheel. “Come on man,” Meyer urged, trying to rouse him. “What’re we waitin’ for?” The rest of their cohort waited in the rover behind them and Pax assumed they were growing equally impatient.

“Orders,” he said simply.

“We got the coordinates. We know our orders,” Meyer argued.

“They could call it off,” Pax reasoned. “Unless we get the go-ahead, we’re AWOL with company property. And you know they’ll deny everything if we don’t get top-cover.” The counter-argument seemed to settle the matter for a time and Pax turned his eyes to the horizon, barely visible in the growing storm.

Moments later, however, a message flickered to life on the rover’s screen:

Cleared for investigation.  
All findings transmitted via medical.

“ _Now_ we’re talkin’,” his partner muttered, not so much shifting as throwing the rover into gear. As the machine moved out of the compound and jostled across the rocky terrain, Pax charted their course on the screen and sent out a silent prayer across the firmament that this little foray would not in the end cost more than he had wagered.


	2. Overtures

“I don’t have to impress upon you the…uniqueness of this request, I would hope.” Director Une glanced from one man to the other, leaning back against her chair. “The Preventers is not a contract operation for hire.”

“We understand that, ma’am,” the younger of the two said. She’d known him from a past life, this one. It was surreal watching him talk, clad in a well-tailored suit, his entire demeanor giving the impression he’d come out of the womb with wingtips on. 

She knew better, and wondered idly whether his business partner had the slightest idea. 

“But given the nature of the project, and how the contract rights were delineated, we believe this may inadvertently start a jurisdiction battle,” the other man weighed in. This one she didn’t know, but something about him was dangerous. He was too accommodating, in her opinion. He seemed the type that would let you hang yourself while he dutifully provided you the rope you requested. “And seeing as the Preventers are intended to be the unbiased security force,” he continued, “the _uniqueness_ , as you said, of this case seemed appropriate for your organization.”

Une bit down on the retort that threatened to spill over. Joint ventures like this had been on the rise since the close of the conflict and employed a great number of people looking for a new start. Investment in world building had proven especially lucrative for both Earth and colonial companies, right when the Earth Sphere’s collective economy had needed a shot of adrenaline. But the more of these business deals that cropped up, the more pressure that came down on the Preventers to keep the peace further and further afield. 

Jupiter’s moon was about to become the most recent addition to the portfolio it would seem. “I’ll make some calls.”

*****

The two of them had been up close to dawn – one fleeing to the building’s roof for meditation, the other stumbling bleary-eyed into the shower. They reconvened as was their nature over coffee as the starfield faded into an imitation blue sky, fluffy clouds and all.

Now the colony’s manufactured sunlight streamed in through the vertical blinds and into the apartment, painting the sparse living space in soft golds of late morning. But they weren’t paying attention. The two of them were too busy reacquainting themselves with the flavor of one another’s heartbeats. Playful bites and deep kisses flooded their senses, narrowing their world to the brush of skin and rasping of clothes. 

At least it was as such until their heavy breathing was suddenly punctuated by a shrill ring from the phone resting on the end table nearby.

“No…no, no, no,” Duo whined against Wufei’s neck as the other man pulled away and reached for the device. He scratched his blunt nails down along the other man’s bare shoulder blades, stretching up to press a line of hungry kisses along his throat. “Let it ring! For the love of God, just once—”

Wufei gave him a disappointed groan moments before answering the call, sounding as calm and collected as he ever did. “This is Chang.”

“Goddammit, ‘Fei…” Duo sighed heavily, venting his frustration and throwing ice on all of his nerve endings. He let gravity take him, falling back down against the couch boneless and defeated (in more ways than one), and ran his fingers through his bangs, gritting his teeth as he did so. Always. Without fail, it seemed. Nothing served as a better cockblock than good ol’ Preventers business.

_Motherfucking piece of shit…_

As expected, Wufei withdrew further and Duo relented, unhooking his legs from the other man’s hips. Mood verifiably killed, Duo scooted backward and pushed himself up into a seated position, his palms braced behind him on the couch cushions, his legs crossed loosely in the now empty space which Wufei had until so recently occupied. In their shared space, he eavesdropped on half the unfolding conversation.

“Where?” There was a pause as the caller answered. Wufei grimaced. “That’s a long way to go in the event there’s nothing wrong. Who called this in?” Another beat, and then Wufei asked, sounding surprised, “Winner?”

Duo perked up at this. “Quatre?” he whispered. 

Wufei didn’t acknowledge him, instead responding to the caller, saying, “Sure – I’m in.”

“Me too!” Duo whispered up at him, throwing in a two-fingered peace sign in for good measure. 

His partner smirked at this. “I think you should include Duo as well.” A pause, and then, “Yes, I’m sure he’ll be able to adjust his calendar if need be.”

“Such a presumptuous boyfriend,” Duo hissed, his voice lacking true venom.

Wufei wrapped up the conversation with acknowledgement of some meeting to come tomorrow, and reaffirmed their joining whatever expedition lay in store. He hung up the phone and tossed it on the end table before turning to Duo to ask, “Did you know Quatre had gone in on terra-forming?”

Duo shrugged. “Sounds vaguely familiar. Saturn? Jupiter?” he suggested.

“Europa,” Wufei answered. 

“Europa? Wait…did we just volunteer to go to fuckin’ Jupiter?” Duo queried, connecting the dots. “Shit that’s like…a seven month roundtrip in flight time _alone._ ” He paused, and then groaned his head dropping back on the couch, his hands coming up to cover his face, his fingers interlacing over his eyes. “We’re gonna have to suspend all our utilities…and our mail…and our telecom service…”

As he ticked through what needed to be done, shutting his eyes against the light that filtered through, he felt the other man wrap his arm around his waist and pull him closer. Duo let his hands drop away and blinked his eyes open as one of Wufei’s calloused hands cradled his cheek. “Yes, we are going to have to do all of that,” the other man admitted, pulling him in for a quick kiss. “But that can wait till tomorrow – no one is going to answer the phone on a Sunday.”

“ _You_ fucking answered the phone on a Sunday,” Duo reminded him bitterly, following the kiss and climbing into his partner’s lap. He ran his hands through Wufei’s tousled black hair, fisting the dark strands at the base of his skull. 

“Yes, well…” Wufei smirked up at him, his hands returning to familiar territory on the other man’s thin hips. “What are you going to do about it?”

*****

The conference room was sparse, in true Preventers fashion. 

Also in true Preventers fashion, the team had already been selected. This apparently agitated his business partner, if Quatre had learned to read the sudden tension in his shoulders correctly. As he followed the older man into the room, he paused to shake the designated team chief’s hand. The man – Lorenzo, he said his name was – stood an easy head and shoulders taller than Quatre, his hands calloused and large. Quatre wondered where the man had been during the conflict, as he didn’t strike him as the former military sort; but then, fifteen years of unadulterated peace could scrub out even some of the most ingrained behaviors. Regardless, he was Earth-born, that much was clear based on sheer size alone.

Lorenzo then paused in the exchange of pleasantries and moved to make room to introduce his military advisor, Quinn. The man was gangly where his chief was thick, and the decorations that adorned his chest indicated he was a colonel with the Pan-American Army, the sky blue bar that spanned the line of individual colored bands marking him an ESUN Liaison Officer. Quatre offered him a pleasant smile too, careful to keep his thoughts to himself…but wondered if they’d perhaps crossed paths on the opposite sides of the battlefield years ago. Quinn only scowled back, but shook his hand easily enough.

Introductions complete, Quatre then took a moment to peruse those assembled over the man’s shoulder. It didn’t take long before he found a familiar face, and his eyes locked with Wufei’s. The agent’s face registered immediate recognition and no small amount of concern before he leaned back to share thoughts unspoken with a colleague a few seats down. Quatre followed the other man’s line of sight and found Heero Yuy joining in on this silent exchange. Heero, however, kept his thoughts to himself and only turned from Wufei to Quatre, his gaze steady as it had ever been.

“Agents,” Lorenzo began once Quatre and his partner had taken their seats at the head of the table, “look sharp. These fine gentlemen are Dr. Mohsen Yosefi and Mr. Quatre Winner. They’ve agreed to provide the pre-departure mission brief and will be embarking with us once we’re cleared for flight.”

“Since when do we have tag-alongs?” a woman Quatre didn’t recognize asked, the challenge – and derision – clear in her voice.

“Since the destination is an ESUN priority asset, that’s when,” the chief shot back. “Now pipe down and stop embarrassing me.” 

When the assembled agents settled once more, Yosefi stood with the practiced air of manufactured courtesy. With a wave of his hand over the holographic screen before him, he brought up the presentation he had sent ahead of them. The synchronized wall screen came alive before the group and displayed various images of Europa and its evolution from a frozen wasteland of a moon, to something that could actually sustain human life.

“For the last seven years Mr. Winner and I have been embarking on a joint venture to terraform Europa, the smallest of Jupiter’s Galilean moons. We have maintained a steady-state operation of roughly 300 contractors...” As he spoke, the images cycled through the facilities, technology, and satellite imagery grabs from the low-orbit communications network they’d put in place.

“We remain on schedule, but have faced a number of set-backs. Many of these are par for the course on terraforming, usually manifesting as natural phenomena as new weather patterns form. However, there was one which we couldn’t explain, that being discrepancies in sensor readings and bio-chemical output in this quadrant,” Yosefi continued, circling the area in question on the projected satellite image. 

“On July 18, at 2200 local, a small team of four men were dispatched to inspect the site. However, shortly afterward we received a report that the men had been attacked while conducting their preliminary investigation—”

“What’s the status of the team you sent?” Colonel Quinn asked them, effectively interrupting the brief.

“At last communication,” Quatre piped up, a dozen faces turning to him, “one was dead, another was recovering but under close observation. But that’s all we have – the colony went dark shortly thereafter and we haven’t been able to hail anyone.” 

He paused, but when Yosefi didn’t resume the brief, Quatre continued, “We were unable to get any information about who attacked them, or whether it had anything to do with the sensors’ readings in that area. Based on all data we gathered before beginning this venture, there shouldn’t have been any humans outposted on Europa except the international space research team back in AC 102…but this wasn’t their site.”

“Hence why we sought you out,” Yosefi added on for good measure. “If we’re dealing with space pirates, that falls squarely into your court I think.”

“How do you know they’re not just having technical difficulties?” one of the agents asked, and Quatre fought the smirk that rose – apparently they’d jumped ahead to Q&A. 

Before he could answer, however, Heero spoke up from his end of the table, “It’s a valid question. Europa is a long way to go and find out that nothing is wrong. What assurances do we have that their satlink didn’t just go down?”

“Because it’s my system,” Quatre answered promptly.

“Fair enough,” Heero admitted with a nod. 

“Let’s break it down,” Lorenzo jumped in, glancing at the watch on his wrist. “We’ll go over the mission specs en route, but for now…we’re talking 300 souls, status uncertain. Presumed hostiles, numbers and capabilities uncertain. Our mission parameters are to check the place out, and ensure security of both the facility and its people. Let’s talk numbers. Flight time.”

“Three and a half months,” came the prompt reply from the back of the room. Quatre glanced up and was happy to see the familiar face of one Duo Maxwell. He clutched his pen between his teeth and with one of his arms slung over the back of the chair beside him, he epitomized the image of the hot-shot pilot. “Four if H.Q. won’t give us the Juliet [[1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5409851/chapters/12498791#chapter_2_endnotes)] I asked for.” After a beat, he added, straight-faced, “Bring snacks. Maybe a deck of cards. A small library…looking to you to supply the last, Chang.”

Rumbling laughter rolled through the group of agents assembled, and Quatre was shocked to see Wufei crack a half-hearted smile before recovering. “Roger that,” he said simply.

“Protocol dictates we spend about half that in stasis,” their chief reminded everyone. “I will not tolerate a team of pent up stir-crazy agents.”

“Ah boss, where’s the fun in that?”

“ _Especially_ you, Maxwell.” Quatre caught the smarmy grin from the man in question in the dim light and fought a smile of his own. “Alright. Headcount,” Lorenzo continued. “Maxwell, you’re driving. We’ve got myself, our friendly military advisor, Vasquez on medical, Guinto manning the comms, and the rest of you on ground support and defense. Any questions?”

“Chang, you’d be a shit poker player,” one of the other agents observed with a smile in the pause that followed the chief’s question. “You think we need one more?”

“I think we need one more,” Wufei acknowledged, ticking down what looked to be a list of names he’d scrawled with a heavy hand. “We have no idea what we’re up against. I’d rather have him with us,” he intoned, glancing up at Lorenzo, who smiled.

“I’ll make some calls.” 

“Excuse me,” Yosefi said, clearing his throat. “‘Him’ who?”

“A specialist we have on retainer,” the chief explained. “Don’t worry – you’ll like him,” he added, his tone suddenly conspiratorial, his eyes sliding to Quatre, who wondered just how much the man knew.

*****

“You’re going to get a call about a job from the Preventers,” the man on the other end of the line informed him. “I sincerely hope you take it.”

Trowa Barton had to laugh. Stepping out of his trailer, he blinked up into the warm light of the Brazilian morning. He ran his hands through his hair and switched the cellphone from one ear to the other and balanced it against his shoulder as he pulled on his boots. “You say that as if I regularly turn them down,” he countered, stepping off of his makeshift stoop to the ground below and heading deeper into the camp, toward the cook’s tent. “I’m surprised by the call though – how do you know that I have incoming?”

There was the briefest of pauses before Quatre continued, “Because it’s my mission, and they told me.”

“ _Your_ mission?” 

“Well…” Quatre started, apparently back-pedaling, “not really ‘mine’ per se, but it’s to my asset. Europa. And I’m going.”

Trowa whistled between his teeth and nodded his approval, even if the man on the other end couldn’t see him. Ducking into the cook’s tent, he nodded at a few of the roustabouts and performers who sat with their breakfasts before making a beeline to the coffee pots at the far end. “How’d you manage to convince _her_ of that?” he asked, speaking of the infamous Preventers Director.

“I’m not entirely sure, to be honest.”

Softer, Barton added, “It’ll be a bit like old times, won’t it?” Within the silence that followed, he let his mind wander for a moment.

He couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen Quatre Winner in action – the years post-conflict had dealt different hands to the lot of them. For Quatre, familial duty had swept him into the fray of PR and politics and scientific advancement. True to his lineage, Trowa supposed. 

Trowa had tried at the outset to stick to the straight and narrow path of peace. But the siren song of heavy artillery called to him in his sleep, and the dreams haunted him in his waking hours. Unless he fed them, that is. When he’d gotten wind from Duo that he and their sometimes estranged brothers in arms had all joined the Preventers, Trowa paid the good Director a visit. 

He still recalled her face – one of unbridled shock – with great pleasure. Zechs Merquise wasn’t the only one who could come back from the dead, after all.

“I have strict orders to keep my head down and stay out of the way,” Quatre told him finally, “so I’m not sure how much I’ll actually be in the thick of things. I get the impression this is unusual for everyone involved.”

Sudden realization dawned on the other man. “We have to pretend we don’t know you, don’t we?”

The question seemed to sober Quatre as well. “At least in the beginning, I think. It’s safer that way. I have to assume your cohort has no idea. My business partner certainly doesn’t.”

“No, the agents don’t know,” Trowa acknowledged. “Probably a wise decision to keep our…eh…general misbehavior and mayhem in the fine print.” 

“So you’ll join this expedition?” Quatre asked, returning to the query at hand.

“For you?” Trowa began, fighting a grin, “Always.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Duo’s using the [International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet#Letters). Here ‘Juliet’ refers to the aircraft model series letter, “J.”


	3. Arrival

Aboard the _EGERIA_ , Duo awoke. Pulled into consciousness with the gentle coaxing of the dim light of the ship’s berth, he lay for a time on his pallet listening to the ship breathe. It was a rare opportunity, given the usual bustle of space travel, one only truly achieved when the system pulled the pilot out of stasis before the crew. Around him, oxygen moved through grated vents, hissing as it went while the crew’s life support monitors on the far wall blinked gold and green, beeping on occasion when someone’s sleep cycle turned over. The ever-present silence of the void, hovering just below the ship’s noise, pressed against the hull, a reminder that the thin, man-made skin was all that separated them from certain death.

Duo grinned. It was going to be a good day.

Sitting up on his pallet, he stretched his arms overhead and looked out over the line of stasis tubes before him, the rest of the travelers still fast asleep. Such was the life of the pilot, he supposed – up first, asleep last. C’est la vie. 

Standing, he hissed softly as his feet hit the cold floor below, wishing not for the first time he’d remembered to pack some semblance of house shoes for the flight. He laughed to himself at the thought of shuffling around with bunny heads on his feet. Wufei would lose his mind at the very sight of it. 

He crossed to the panel on the other end of the room and scanned through the team’s vitals. Some were already coming up out of REM sleep…others wouldn’t for another hour or so if he had to guess. And then there was Heero, who seemed to _always_ be in REM sleep. Duo chuckled and pulled up the medical system’s mainframe. After plugging in a few commands – lights turn on, heat comes up, etc. etc. – he headed for the showers.

Once suitably washed and dressed, Duo strode through the ship as it came back to life around him, cutting through the mess then onward through comms station before reaching the _EGERIA_ ’s bridge. The vessel was one of the Preventer’s newer models. Compact and easily managed by a single pilot, it was the field agents’ transport of choice for distant missions. Built by the colonies, it was designed for far-flung – but still “local” – support missions, and would stay in orbit while the team went to the surface via one of the two drop ships in the cargo hold. 

Duo liked her already – anything that kept them anchored off-planet (or moon in this case), was a good thing, in his humble opinion. Sliding easily into his seat, his fingers flew over the panels, double-checking their final approach to Europa and their intended gravitational tie-in with the satellite. “Green is go,” he muttered under his breath. Reaching above his head, he added, “Sorry, Heero. Time for school,” and flipped the switch to the sleeping quarters, overriding the steady-state management and beginning the stasis chambers’ auto-wake-the-fuck-up process. 

Turning to the monitor on his left, Duo pulled up the ship’s closed circuit and flipped through the cameras until he found the sleeping quarters. The tubes were open and their occupants were awake, albeit groggy and disoriented. Except Wufei. Wufei was never groggy and disoriented. The man was already at the lockers, efficient as ever.

Juxtapose that with Heero – who had merely rolled over and (presumably) gone back to sleep – they made for an interesting social study.

Reaching over the console, he pulled down the microphone headset and settled the band over his head before flipping on the audio. “Good morning,” he crooned, his voice thick with stifled laughter. Several of the agents looked up at the ceiling-mounted speaker before going about their business. “We are cruising through Jupiter’s air space – or rather, lack-of-air space – and are about to enter orbit over Europa. That means it is now day number 106 since we departed Earth’s orbit, in case you were wondering. That’s a lot of travel comp.

“For those of you who can’t tell your hand from a hand grenade, might I also take this opportunity to _remind_ you all that there is _no_ smoking on my ship, happy hour will _only_ last an hour _on principle_ , and there is _no strip poker_ before I clock out. You hear me, Vasquez?” The woman in question looked up at the camera and laughed heartily.

Getting back to business, Duo continued, “The Chief left me a note to read through the tick-tock for you slackers, so here’s your one and only reminder of what we’re doing today. It is currently...0635 local. At 0800 we’ll reconvene in the aft conference room for the mission brief. Immediately thereafter, we pack up for a _prompt_ 1000 departure. From there, it’ll take us about 30 minutes to get down on the ground.

“If you’re doing the math,” he continued, “that means you’ve only got a little shy of 90 minutes to do fuck all. I for one plan to have a one-man dance party up here in my skivvies in case anyone is interested in joining me. And on that note…” Stretching an arm out to his right, he flipped a switch on the console…

*****

Back in the sleeping quarters, the rest of the team – and their two guests – were busying themselves in their respective waking habits as Duo chattered away, some groggily stumbling out of the stasis tubes and into the showers, others heading first to their lockers, still more easing into consciousness with careful intention. They all, however, paused when the speakers overhead droned a brass band reveille of classic Kansas City jazz. 

Standing before his designated locker, Quatre fought a sudden bout of laughter. Glancing sidelong at the team chief and Colonel Quinn, who was staring up at the speaker with no small shred of exasperation, he wondered how often this occurred. Clearly, it didn’t come as a surprise.

At the other end of the row of lockers, Lorenzo drew his eyes back down from the ceiling and turned to his military advisor. In face of Quinn’s open but unspoken disapproval, the team chief cracked a wide smile. “I’ll allow it. But you shouldn’t laugh,” he added, spying Quatre watching them from a few steps away. “It just encourages him.”

“Duly noted,” Quatre told him, not quite able to keep the laughter from his voice as he continued to dress.

“Our pilot apparently moonlights as a disc jockey,” Yosefi muttered under his breath as he came to stand next to him. “And the other agents have no respect for authority, from what I’ve seen. Are you sure this was the right call?”

“You read their dossiers, just like I did,” Quatre reminded the older man, pulling a shirt on over his head. “These are some of the best agents that Preventers _has_ , much less could send.” Shutting his locker, he shot his partner a disarming smile. “Besides,” he said, “I kind of like it.”

*****

“Barton, stop wasting time. Get moving.”

“How can you be so damn conscious?” Trowa grumbled, rubbing at his face and blinking up into the ceiling lights before turning his glare on the other man. “I just got out of the tube, man…”

Wufei ignored the reproach, but did ask, “How are you feeling?”

Trowa snorted under his breath and looked up, bleary-eyed, at the other man. “Nauseous,” he spat, and very slowly stood up from his pallet, taking great pleasure in watching Wufei take several steps away from him as he did so. 

Walking down the line of empty stasis tubes towards the lockers, he paused at the last, where Heero Yuy lay. The man had rolled on to his side, his knees bent and tucked up towards his ribs in the small pallet of the tube. As Trowa reached down and patted Heero’s shoulder, he registered Wufei standing nearby. “Come on, Sleeping Beauty. Up and at ‘em.”

Heero responded only with an unintelligible groan, his eyes slitting open with a scowl.

“I know, I know,” Trowa concurred, scrubbing at his eyes again with the heel of his palm. “The short stints are always the worst.”

Behind him, Wufei offered, “If you ask nicely, maybe we can get the chief to serve you breakfast in bed.”

“Would he?” Heero asked, finally pushing himself up to a seated position. His voice was earnest when he added, “That would be nice.”

Trowa offered a bark of laughter, while Wufei snorted derisively and reached out to tap Trowa on the shoulder. “Come on,” he said, urging the other man away. To Heero, he said, “I’ll save you a seat in the mess.”

*****

Showered, dressed, and suitably fed, the crew and their guests entered the conference room. Lorenzo and Quinn were already pre-positioned at the head of the table. When Yosefi took a seat to the chief’s right and motioned for Quatre to join him, he tamped down the sudden resistance and acquiesced with what he hoped was a gracious smile. 

Seated, he watched as the others flitted around the table, gravitating to chairs that had been apparently claimed with invisible ink. The young comms officer – Guinto, Quatre recalled – took the seat next to him, shifting it a few centimeters away out of courtesy, Quatre assumed. He offered the other man – who was diminutive in the colonial fashion, with gemstone eyes like his own – a reassuring smile, which Guinto gladly returned. Vasquez dropped easily into a seat next to their military advisor, and Wufei strategically selected the seat directly opposite of Quatre himself. Heero – trailing several steps behind, a cup of thin coffee grasped firmly in-hand – followed, taking a seat next to Wufei. Duo and Trowa each slid into the seats along the wall immediately behind them, the rest of the ground force team filling in the empty chairs.

“Alright agents, settle down,” Lorenzo began, standing up at the front of the table. “Last round-up before we’re in motion. After this brief wraps, I want everyone loaded up and ready to go for an on-time departure. 

“Colonel Quinn…” the chief transitioned, turning the floor over to his military advisor. 

“Agents, gentlemen,” he began. “Based on the report we received from Winner and Yosefi, we are aiming for a standard INFIL operation, but need to be prepared for anything.” Pausing, he brought up several maps in rapid succession. “From our position in low Europa orbit, Maxwell will take us down en mass to the moon’s surface for a dust-off with the APC.[[1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5409851/chapters/12498962#chapter_3_endnotes)] Duo, you’ll relocate to here,” Quinn said, noting a location roughly a kilometer away from the compound. “The rest of us will take the APC in. 

“The team will breach the compound from the south gate, here,” he continued, pointing again. “I will stay aboard the APC with our tagalongs to monitor progress remotely until the situation can be assessed. Once the site is secured, we’ll move to establish a C2 center here on-site, possibly at the colony’s operations center, depending on its status. Questions so far?”

“Are we expecting a stand-up fire fight yet?” Vasquez grumbled, her arms crossed defiantly over her chest. 

“Check your attitude, Vasquez,” Lorenzo cautioned. “I haven’t had my second cup of coffee yet.”

“Apologies, sir,” the woman acknowledged, shifting to rest her elbows on the conference table. “It’s just been awhile since I got to do much more than hand out Band-Aids.”

“Worse comes to worse, you could always throw Maxwell down a flight of stairs,” suggested one of the agents seated behind Quatre. The man’s voice was laden with friendly jest, but Quatre saw Wufei prickle at the suggestion from across the table, mirroring the spike of protectiveness that flared in his own chest.

“Hey,” Duo shot back from the row of seats along the wall, jabbing a finger at the other man before anyone else could speak. “Ya try it, ya’ll be _walkin’_ home.”

The chief sighed, and gestured for Quinn to continue. “As to the situation on the ground, it’s still unclear,” the colonel admitted. “No new data has been sent from headquarters, and we still have not heard anything from the colony itself.”

“So the answer is a resounding…. _maybe_ ,” Guinto observed, sounding about as put-out as Vasquez had.

“Glad you’re with us, Barton,” the man behind Quatre spoke again.

Trowa was unruffled, “The Motherland’s GDP at work, Ivanov. Good thing you’re not also trying to fund an arms race.” 

The comment resulted in a wholly unprofessional snort from Quatre, but he quickly pressed his lips in a fine line in an effort to recover. He caught a disapproving look from Yosefi in the corner of his eye, but opted to ignore it.

“What’s the plan in event of hostile encounters?” Heero’s question shifted conversation entirely back to business, sobering the atmosphere in the conference room. 

“Pirating outfits rarely operate in large groups, so it shouldn’t be anything you can’t handle,” Lorenzo assured. “Provide aid and assistance to non-combatants, and subdue the ones shooting at you.”

“And in the event it’s a mutiny?” Wufei asked. “We have the necessary skills and firepower to deal with most contingencies, but we don’t have the numbers to suppress an uprising.”

Colonel Quinn was undeterred. “That’s why you all have the blue stripes on your shoulders. In the event of friendly fire, keep yourselves safe, but the mission will be to evacuate those in danger. You were selected because we don’t know what we’re up against,” the colonel emphasized, looking around the room. “The Director personally selected the lot of you. Don’t give her cause to doubt that decision.”

“‘Hand selected,’” Heero muttered under his breath as the brief continued uninterrupted. Turning to Wufei beside him, he whispered, “For termination, most likely.”

Duo leaned forward between the two of them and whispered something back, too softly for Quatre to hear. But in this proximity, he could still read lips just fine: “‘All died under unfortunate circumstances hundreds of millions of miles away.’ Convenient.”

“Not her style,” Trowa countered, silently.

Wufei nodded, leaning back to add, “Not even _she_ is _that_ creative.”

As the briefing drew to a close, the agents dispersed as quickly as they’d arrived, the lot of them slipping out the conference room door assignments and pre-departure tasks divvied amongst them. Lorenzo and Quinn followed behind the initial wave, Yosefi and Winner in tow, taking measured steps through the ship and into the main hangar. 

Upon entry, Quatre was struck by the thought that the hangar alone must have accounted for half the ship. He watched from a corner as the agents busied themselves, locking down cargo holds and weapons rooms, double- and triple-checking supplies and armaments to take to the surface. Hydraulics whirred and hissed as the drop ship – with Duo apparently already aboard – was relocated over the hangar’s airlock elevator. 

He sighed heavily, chewing on a feeling that felt suspiciously like homesickness. He crossed his arms across his waist, clasping his elbows in opposite hands and watched the well-orchestrated chaos ebb and flow around him. Yosefi and pulled Lorenzo and Quinn off several meters away, hurriedly bending their ears on the importance of maintaining the site’s structural integrity. Apparently the sight of so many small arms had stirred some concern he’d been able to keep buried until now.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Quatre almost apologized without looking, assuming he was in the way. But then it dawned on him who the owner of that voice was and he turned sharply to find Heero standing before him, Wufei just behind. 

He fought the smile – apparently they’d all agreed to keep up the act for the time being – and asked equally formally, “Yes, agent?”

The corner of Heero’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile, almost. “Sorry to bother you, but you seemed bored. You built that heavy loader, didn’t you?” he asked, jabbing a thumb back at the exoskeleton in question.

Quatre smirked. “Well, I didn’t personally screw the thing together,” he began, “but I can operate it, if that’s what you mean.”

Heero and Wufei exchanged a look. “Want to load missiles into the drop ship?” Heero asked, turning back to him.

“Yes,” Quatre sighed, relieved and – he was almost embarrassed to admit – excited. 

Wufei caught the tone and chuckled. “Have fun. Ignore anything Quinn says to get you to stop. I think we need to set the record straight on what your actual value-add to this mission is.” He clapped Quatre on the shoulder, dropping all pretense of unfamiliarity, and urged him on toward the device. “Go on – we’ll see you onboard in a few.”

They parted, Heero and Wufei walking toward what Quatre had gathered was the armaments locker while he darted to the loader. Wrapping his hands around rungs that trailed up the exoskeleton’s flank, he swung easily into the harness and strapped himself in. His fingers flew over the keypad on the device’s arm and rolled the thumb sticks on either side, testing the loader’s responsiveness before he walked forward. 

As he approached the drop ship, he glanced up at the cockpit and saw Duo looking down on him, his head tilted sideways and his face betraying both confusion and curiosity. Quatre rolled this thumb over the sensor in the suit to raise one of the loader’s arms, which he then waved back and forth in greeting.

The response was instantaneous. Duo laughed heartily, falling backward against the pilot’s seat and almost disappearing entirely from Quatre’s line of sight. He then straightened, grinning like a fool, and offered the other man two emphatic thumbs-up. From behind the drop ship’s windows, Duo silently mouthed, “Yes! Good!”

Quatre laughed and turned the loader to the rack of missiles.

*****

“Alright folks – combat seating to be on the safe side,” Lorenzo instructed as the agents filed into the APC, armed to the gills and clad in gray-toned camouflage, their pale blue helmets unmistakably marking them as a Preventers squad. Quatre and Yosefi followed them into the vehicle, the team chief bringing up the rear and sliding the door shut behind them. Quatre watched the man move about the cabin in his own camo and blue, and began to second guess his initial assessment of the man’s past life. Perhaps he _had_ served…

As they got situated, Vasquez squeezed passed them without a word, removing her helmet as she did so and taking a seat behind the APC’s steering wheel. The rest of the group took their seats along the walls, their knees nearly touching, stowing their weapons in holsters and overhead. As Quatre and his partner strapped in off to the side, he watched Trowa secure a smart gun, though what series it was, he couldn’t tell. A massive thing, it spanned the length of the other man’s torso at least. 

Yosefi saw it to and turned to him, “I thought Preventers only conducted defensive or peace keeping missions.”

Trowa apparently heard him. “That’s true,” he answered, slipping into his seat at the front of the row and pulling the heavy safety bar down over his and his partner’s lap. As he did so, Vasquez put the APC in gear and moved them up the loading ramp into the drop ship. “But sometimes it’s nice to know that you’re the one that brought the gun to a knife fight.”

“What series is that?” Quatre asked him, eyes darting over to the smart gun.

“It’s a sixty-four. Not the newest thing in the armory, but I personally think they’re more reliable than the more recent variations.”

“I get the impression that those don’t come standard issue.”

Trowa smiled in a rather disarming way. “You would guess right. But as a contractor, I get to play by different rules.”

Quatre felt Yosefi shudder beside him. “I understand the need for an all-purpose preparation for this situation,” the man said, “but this feels a bit excessive. Between the missiles, the rifles, and this—”

“Don’t forget flamethrowers that I saw people picking up,” Quatre butted in, suppressing a grin.

“—Yes and those,” Yosefi agreed, pressing onward, “I can’t imagine what contingency you all are actually planning for.”

Trowa glanced back at the group of agents, who were engaged in their own conversations. Quatre wondered if he was looking for an out. When none presented itself, Trowa turned back to them and replied, “What contingency? All of them.”

Through the hull of the APC, Quatre could hear hydraulics rumbling, warning sirens of airlocks opening…but they sounded distant, deceptively so. He felt his heart begin to beat rapidly, knowing full well what was coming. Lorenzo and Quinn, each sensing approaching departure took their own seats in the fore of the cabin with the two civilians. 

“Hope everyone’s strapped in – new atmosphere means we’re in for a bumpy ride,” Duo’s voice came in grainy over the speakers in the APC, patched through from the drop ship’s cabin. “Ten seconds to drop. On my mark…”

As the countdown began, Quatre took a deep, steadying breath. It had been a long time since he’d done a drop, even longer since he’d had to do one blind, trusting someone else to get him from Point A to Point B in one piece. Calculated to puncture an atmosphere rather than be pulled by gravity, drops were meant to get you to the ground as quickly as possible without atomizing yourself in the process. Quite different from the regular civilian shuttle system, which tended to ride the atmosphere on a gradual glide path to destination. 

He searched the faces of the agents assembled, and found none of them particularly nervous, which he assumed was par for the course given their line of work. Heero, he noticed, was already starting to doze off, his head listing to the side. He exhaled a breath tinged with laughter, and Duo released the breaks, firing the drop ship as if from a canon.

His stomach flew up into his ribs and he watched some of the agents in the back of the crowd throw their hands up over their head, as if they had boarded some amusement ride. Next to him, Yosefi groaned, and clutched the protective bar that held them in, his knuckles going white. Quatre forced himself to breathe. 

And then he reminded himself who was in the pilot seat. He wasn’t sure if this comforted him or not, but he know that he would’ve laughed again if it wasn’t proving so difficult to inhale.

The pressure eased soon enough, but the turbulence increased as they entered Europa’s manufactured atmosphere, buffeting the ship and the crew inside the APC. Down the line of agents, someone asked, “Ever been in one of these things when they bounce?”

“They don’t bounce, idiot.”

“Oh yeah they do – apply enough force, anything’ll bounce.”

“Duo’s piloting is better than that,” Wufei chimed in, his voice acid-laced as he glared down the line.

“Tell that to my stomach, Chang.”

Just as Quatre was about to agree with the other agent, the turbulence subsided and Duo’s voice once more crackled to life on the speakers overhead. “That should be the worst of it. At this time, you are free to move about the cabin. Colonial compound dead ahead.”

At the last, Quinn and Lorenzo unfastened their respective harnesses and moved to the bay of monitors built into the APC’s left wall. Quatre craned his neck to see. As the monitors flickered to life, Quatre saw the top row offered grainy, blue-tinted images of the agents’ seating companions. He searched the rows until he found the image from the cockpit and watched the compound’s walls and the massive atmosphere engine loom up out of the cloud cover and dust like preternatural goliaths, ghosts of human creation.

“Body cameras are all nominal,” Quinn reported as the team chief leaned down. “Visibility outside is shit though, sir.”

“That’s why Maxwell is driving,” Lorenzo reminded him. Pulling down a pair of headsets from a compartment near the ceiling, he passed one to Quinn and settled the other over his own head. “Duo, give me a quick, low circle over this place,” Lorenzo said over the mic, his eyes flitting over the monitors that Quinn was similarly glued to.

“Sure thing, boss,” came the prompt reply. They drew lower and lower, sweeping almost lazily over the colonial compound. “Exterior lights are on, but doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” Duo observed from his vantage point.

Lorenzo mulled this for a time. “Infrastructure is intact, shield gates are sealed. No signs of movement or violence either.”

“I’m not sure if that’s necessarily a good thing,” Quinn intoned, grimacing. 

Lorenzo nodded his bitter agreement and straightened as best he could in the small APC cabin. “Alright Duo, take us down,” he ordered. “Vasquez, get ready for the dust-off.”

Beneath them, Quatre felt the APC come to life, the sound of the engine rumbling through the hull, while the agents readied themselves for quick departure, harnesses and safety bars lifted and secured, final weapons checks completed. Trowa stood and reattached the smart gun to its mounting on his chest, standing by the door at the ready. Wufei meanwhile reached across the aisle and shook Heero awake – Quatre thought he looked a bit flummoxed as he did so.

Duo counted down once more, and at the end, Vasquez throttled the engine and the APC flew forward, jostling those inside as it hit ground, suddenly running on its own velocity rather than that of the drop ship. “APC is away,” Duo said, and Quatre realized with a surge of disappointment that the other man was no longer with them. “Have fun kids – don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” The comment earned half-hearted laughter as the agents prepared for departure.

“Alright team,” Lorenzo said, standing before them. “Clean and controlled. We’ve got you on camera, so please don’t do anything stupid that the Preventers will have to strike from the visual record.”

As the APC approached the complex, Vasquez called from the main cabin, “South Gates are locked tight. Anyone want to go out and knock?”

Lorenzo crossed to the APC’s sliding door and instructed, “Yuy, get the door. Barton, cover for him. Let’s go.” As he slid the door open, the two men sprung forward and out. 

When they disappeared from sight, Quatre turned to watch Heero’s feed. Trowa kept one eye on the ramparts above, the smart gun swinging, looking for a target. When none came, Heero darted behind him to the control panel. Quatre watched his fingers work, the voyeur on Heero’s shoulder, as he pulled apart the tangled mess of wires, stripping a few which he held between his fingers. With some careful twisting, he closed the circuits and looked up as the massive shield doors slid apart. 

The two men retreated to the APC and hopped in as it sped forward, Barton staying half-out of the vehicle, weapon at the ready. When Vasquez drew to a stop once more outside of the compound’s main door, the agents filed in behind Yuy and dispersed. Vasquez followed shortly after, slamming the APC’s door shut behind her as she sprinted to catch up. 

Quatre stood in the suddenly vacant APC and crossed to stand behind Quinn, his eyes darted between the monitors. Out of habit, he searched out familiar names that displayed on-screen, and struggled to seek out the other agents, hoping some of them would maintain somewhat steady visibility on the others. Through Guinto’s camera, he watched Heero hotwire the compound’s door, standing at the ready with his rifle as the locks released with a thick hiss and the doors slid apart.

“Alright, in you go,” he heard Lorenzo urge over the audio, and watched from the chief’s vantage point as Trowa strode forward, the others close behind. 

Turning to Barton’s monitor, Quatre watched the scene unfold alongside him. The corridors were empty, completely abandoned. It looked as if someone had taken a shredder to the interior: vents torn from the ceiling, floor plating and pipes pulled from their moorings, and exposed wiring hung from the ceiling in languid, arcing loops. “What happened here?” Quatre whispered to himself as the squad moved further into the complex. Something twisted in his stomach, slowly coiling in on itself. He could feel his fingers itch for action, watching the others move deeper into the compound.

“Chang, take your crew and head up the stairwell. The rest of you stay with me on this level,” Lorenzo instructed. He then asked, “Quinn, are you still reading us?”

“Loud and clear, sir. Signals are good, audio is good,” the colonel responded. “Any signs of life?”

“Nothing. Not yet at least.” 

“Nothing here either,” Ivanov responded. “We’ve got shell casings, but nothing more than that.”

“Hey, what happens when we get to the fork in the road?” Vasquez asked as the teams neared a four-way intersection.

“We’ll split into our standard teams of two.”

“Missed opportunity, Chief. The correct answer is ‘you take it,’ but I guess splitting up works too.”

“Isn’t this one of those horror movie tropes? Splitting up?”

“Can we not?” The latter came from Wufei, the irritation transparent in his tone. Quatre smirked in spite of himself.

“Cut the chatter. Business only until we know what we’re dealing with.” With the gentle reprimand, the team’s conversation slid to a halt and the agents paired off. Quatre watched in second-hand as Heero and Wufei turned right while Trowa and Vasquez did the same one floor down. 

As the latter rounded a corner, a flimsy barricade appeared before them, cobbled together by an amalgamation of construction equipment and metal siding which Quatre assumed had been siphoned off from somewhere else in the complex. The walls were scorched, and as Vasquez stepped closer to inspect, Quatre and she both saw that they were also riddled with bullet holes. “Looks like there was a fight, alright,” she reported. “Looks like they tried to block themselves off. Doesn’t look like it held, though.”

“Any casualties?” Lorenzo asked from a separate quadrant altogether.

“Nothing and nobody,” Vasquez answered promptly. 

“Alright. Stay alert. Use your motion trackers, see if we can get anything.”

There was a general shuffle as the agents switched on their monitors and the audio was flooded with muted clicking as the devices swept the corridors. Quatre found himself hoping that they’d find someone – anyone – at this rate. 300 people, he reminded himself, 300 people don’t up and disappear. 

“Where is everyone?” Yosefi asked, mirroring Quatre’s thoughts.

At the question, Heero’s sensor went off, a high-pitched _ping_ which seemed to echo in the empty corridor. From the agent’s camera, Quatre watched as Wufei paused, waiting for further guidance while Heero ducked down to look at the tracker’s screen.

“Yuy, you get something?” Quinn asked, sounding hopeful.

“No,” Heero answered with a frustrated sigh. “False positive – there’s holes in the floor. We’re reading Barton and Vasquez below us.”

“Holes in the floor?” Lorenzo asked, pausing in his own patrol. “Clarification?”

“Like…actual holes in the floor,” Heero told him, as he approached one not far from where he and Wufei stood and knelt down. Through the camera, the others in the APC watched him run his fingers along the gaping metal edge. “It looks melted. Acid maybe?”

“Do your companies produce anything so corrosive that it could do this?” Quinn asked them, glancing over his shoulder at the civilians.

“Not here, we don’t,” Yosefi answered on impulse. Quinn relayed the message back to the team.

“There’s more of them, down this way,” Wufei informed the group, moving to a much larger pit. Looking over the edge, the camera caught Barton and Vasquez doing much the same. Stories upon stories stretched out below them, deep into the subterranean foundations of the colony. Beneath them, Trowa looked up and then promptly lost interest, moving on, while Vasquez kept one eye on the motion tracker in hand.

“How far down do you think that goes?” 

Wufei looked up, catching Heero with his camera. The other man looked mildly concerned, thoughtful. “Not sure,” Wufei told him. After a beat, he suggested, “Why don’t we throw Barton in and find out?”

Below them – up through the hole – and over the intercom, they heard the man in question spit back, “I heard that, you know…”

The search continued for roughly half an hour while the team circled and double-backed in the off-chance they’d missed something. 300 people. Gone. And despite the structural damage and dilapidation…no bodies, no blood. “Whole lot of nothing,” Quinn hissed.

Lorenzo seemed to have the same idea. “Agents, let’s call it. Guinto and Ivanov, double back to ensure our guests get in safely. The rest of you, reconvene at the operations center. It seems like it’s still up and running, based on what we saw when we circled.

“Maxwell,” the chief continued, speaking into his mic.

“Yo!” the pilot hailed back.

“Bring her around. Site is secured.”

*****

“We up and running?” Lorenzo asked, eyes darting among his agents as he unsnapped and slid off his blue helmet. Beside him, Vasquez made some comment about checking the medical suite before bidding a hasty retreat. Duo and Ivanov meanwhile strode past them all to a corner of the ops center, dropping off crates of supplies which had been until now stowed on the drop ship itself.

“Just about,” Heero informed him, fingers flying over the keys at one of the terminals. Blue text scrolled over the black screen as the core systems came back online. Within seconds, the emergency lighting switched off and the overheads flickered to life once more, followed shortly thereafter by the screens around them booting back up.

“Nicely done, Yuy. Let’s see what we can see,” the chief commended, clapping the agent on the shoulder as he strode past him toward the monitors displaying the close circuit video. 

“You just hacked into the mainframe?” Yosefi asked, sounding perturbed about the cyber violation, but was nonetheless impressed. 

Heero looked back at them, his eyes flicking momentarily to Quatre before resettling on the other man, “Not like it was hard,” he informed him, then added, “You should try getting into an orbital colony’s stabilization processes. That one takes three people.” Against the opposite wall, Quatre watched Trowa’s shoulders shudder with silent laughter at some inside joke.

“Still nothing,” Quinn reported, after a thorough review on the feed coming in from the colony’s security cameras.

“Is there any video we can go back to?” Lorenzo asked. “Back track to the date in question?”

Quinn snorted, dismissive. “Apparently they didn’t record anything.”

Quatre shook his head and hissed, “Figures.” Distant outposts like this rarely saw the importance of recording daily life – it ate bandwidth and data storage. Besides, they were far more interested in capturing readings and malfunctions and chemical compositions of the air around them. It was unfortunate, given the circumstances, but unsurprising. 

At that moment, Vasquez reappeared, clutching the doorframe and swinging perilously into the room. “Guys,” she gasped, “you gotta see the crazy shit in medical.”

*****

The colony’s medical facility was compact but advanced. Quatre had made sure of that – it needed to be, when you were nearly four months from Earth. But the sight that met them upon arrival chilled him. The lab had been ransacked, or so it appeared: furniture askew, cots missing sleeping pads, medical supply closets emptied of their most vital contents. Even the CMO’s station had been clearly tampered with – file folders scattered about amongst abandoned coffee cups, pens, and even a small naphtha lighter if one could believe it. 

Once the crew had gathered, Vasquez flipped the switch on the wall for the side laboratory, which illuminated a collection of glass specimen tubes, filled with something entirely alien. The…animals, if they could be called that sported long muscular tails that reminded Quatre of the sand snakes he would see in the deserts of earth. The body, however, was something unlike anything he had ever seen. Spindly, jointed legs stretched out from a central mass which consisted mainly of two bulging, fleshy sacks. Taking a few steps closer, he realized at the tip of each of those legs was what looked like a fingernail – not a claw like he would have assumed an animal would sport, but an actual humanlike fingernail. 

It was grotesque and some part of him felt vaguely threatened, even with the thing behind glass. Looking around those gathered, he wagered he wasn’t the only one.

“Why weren’t these reported before?” Lorenzo demanded of the agents gathered.

“We were looking for people, chief,” Ivanov told him, “I didn’t think it appropriate during the sweep to waste time on science experiments.”

“Science experiments though they may be,” Vasquez began, picking up a chart and flipping through the pages, “they aren’t lab-grown.”

“What do you mean?”

“Based on the report by the CMO, these things were brought back from some undisclosed location off-site. Two were captured alive. The other two…well…” The words seemed to come with difficulty, as if she were struggling to make sense of the report in her hands. “Of the team that brought these back, two had had these things attached to their faces. Like parasites. The first guy, they tried to cut it off of him and that didn’t work out too well for anyone from the looks of it.” She grimaced, but said no more.

“Vasquez, come on.”

“Well, when they cut it off, not only did the parasite die, but it killed its host too. It also says in the report that the operation destroyed a collection of the medical team’s instruments, whatever that means. Anyway, that’s baddie in tube number one,” Vasquez said, gesturing to the furthest tube.

“The second victim – they x-rayed him first, ran a bunch of tests and found that this thing was actually keeping him alive. So they left him alone.” She shook her head at this, but continued. “It fell off a few days later.”

“And the patient it was attached to?”

“Report says the man seemed to have recovered. They kept him in quarantine and observation for about a week, but then…nothing happened, and they released him. They pumped him full of drugs – antiparasitics, antibiotics, anti-what-have you – and sent him on his way.”

“That’s crazy,” Duo commented, leaning in to get a better look at one of the creatures.

“Yeah, just a bit,” Vasquez agreed. Setting the report aside she warned, “Be careful man, Number Three is a bit aggressive.” No sooner had the words escaped her mouth than the spider-legged creature pressed itself up against the glass barrier, its tail lashing back and forth. Vasquez threw in for good measure, “See? It did the same thing to me when I walked in. Scared me half to death.”

“Apparently it’s got its radar set for ‘hot stuff,’” one of the other agents suggested, winking at Vasquez and Duo in equal measure.

The latter grinned, though Quatre could tell it was a bit forced, “Not sure if I like the sound of that, to be honest.”

“This is fascinating,” Quinn jumped in, waving his hand over the room, “but it doesn’t get us any closer to figuring out what happened to the colonists.”

Vasquez shrugged. “Maybe not, but maybe it’s part of the puzzle. Figured I should report it to be on the safe side,” she told him, leveling a heated glare at Ivanov, who pointedly ignored her. “I thought it was interesting that some crew brought these back. A four man crew.” Turning to Quatre and Yosefi, she asked, “Didn’t you say it was a four-man team that went on some investigative mission?”

Quatre felt trepidation wrap its icy fingers around his heart. “Yes...yes it was. But they were sent to go look into why our sensors weren’t working correctly.”

“Any idea why they would’ve picked up some local fauna?”

“No,” Quatre said with absolute certainty. “Absolutely not.”

“When was the last time the CMO logged something?” Yosefi asked, closing the distance between them. She handed him the report when he asked to see it, and he flipped through the pages.

“About a week before you said you lost contact. Everything after this particular incident is same-old terra-forming stuff. Nothing outlandish.”

“Alright, so…a four-man team is sent to go check on some sensors. They come back with these, these things. And then about a week later, the colony goes dark,” Lorenzo summed up for those assembled. He mulled this over. Gently, he began, “Now, I recognize correlation doesn’t equate to causation. But there may be something to this.”

“So let’s find a colonist and ask them,” Wufei said from his corner, sounding frustrated and – possibly – a little bored. “They’re still here in the complex, somewhere,” he asserted with great confidence. “They didn’t just evaporate into thin air. We need to find them, and then we can figure out what happened.”

*****

Back in the operations center, Heero pulled up the compound’s schematics, toggling controls for the touchscreen tabletop at one end of the room. The crew gathered around, and Heero slid into a spot next to Duo. Before Quinn could request the controls, Heero passed them to Quatre. With a muted word of thanks, he began to slide the diagram systematically around the board. When one level showed nothing, he dropped in the next tier, growing increasingly concerned as he did so.

“So what exactly are we doing?” Ivanov asked, leaning heavily over the table and watching the colony’s skeletal diagram move one way and then the next.

Quatre didn’t look up from the touchscreen as he answered, “We’re looking for the colonists.” 

“But why would you find them on a schematic?”

“Because the colonists were all tagged with bio-readers, implanted just under the skin. They were intended to be a self-study, if you will, on the effects of living long-term under a new atmosphere so close to a gas giant,” Yosefi explained from where he stood next to Quinn. “The chips also had tracking devices tied to the complex’s database, so…one would think they’d show up.”

“They don’t?” Trowa asked, joining the group late, two cups of coffee in hand. He passed one to Heero, who downed it in a few gulps. 

“No,” Quatre said at last, looking up. “They’re not here. Not in the compound at least.”

“What would make three hundred people just up and leave?” Guinto asked, eyes flicking from the board to the other agents in turn.

“Maybe they were driven out.”

“Or taken,” Heero offered. When the others turned to him, he added, “The barricades, the bullets – that was a defensive fight, last ditch effort though it may have been. They weren’t running any further than that.”

“And yet…no bodies, no blood.”

“Taken…” Quatre muttered under his breath, rolling the thought around in his head. Looking up at Lorenzo and Wufei, who stood opposite of him across the table. “In the sweep, there was nothing – no movement, no signs of life here.”

The team chief nodded. “That’s correct. I had Vasquez do a secondary sweep on biometrics, and got no readings on those sensors either.”

Turning back to the table Quatre said, again more to himself than the others, “They have to be here, somewhere. Those chips are active anywhere within a three kilometer radius of this station. If they’re anywhere near us, we’ll know.” With a swipe of his finger, he swapped out the compound’s schematic for one of the entire complex, and started the search over. 

They stripped layer after layer of the complex’s massive structure away, like pealing apart a particularly acrid onion, trepidation and anticipation mounting with every floor until at last – four levels below the moon’s surface – they found them at the atmosphere engine.

“How many?” Quinn asked him, looking down at the blinking reading on the table.

“Um…all of them, from the looks of it,” Quatre responded, glancing back and forth from the massive location hit and the readings that scrolled in the display margins near his elbow. 

“Status?” 

“Unclear,” Quatre answered, a bit disheartened. “We can’t tell from this display. This was just meant to drop pins on a map.”

“Would it help to relocate to medical?” Wufei asked.

Quatre shrugged; Yosefi replied for him, “It might, but we’d have to pull up each individual record to see their current status.”

“Waste of time,” Lorenzo decided, shaking his head. Taking hold of his helmet once more he told his team, “Alright, everyone – suit up. Time to move out.”

As the agents reassembled their gear and weapons – and Duo bolted ahead to beat them to the drop ship which had been parked in the compound’s open courtyard – Yosefi circled around the table to join Quatre who was still staring at the table as if he suspected it would bite him if given half the chance. “This still doesn’t explain _why_ they’re all in sub-level four of the atmosphere engine,” the man said, reading Quatre’s thoughts.

The younger man nodded, wordless. Pushing away from the schematic, they followed Quinn back to the APC.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Armored Personnel Carrier


	4. First Contact

The flight to the atmosphere engine – a massive structure that loomed up out of the darkness and cloud cover – passed in a matter of seconds. Duo deposited them once more before taking off again, and Vasquez easily navigated the APC down the wide service ramp and into the structure’s heart. Bringing the vehicle to a stop, she stepped out of the fore cabin and informed them, “Ramp’s blocked up ahead, but I was able to get us to a stairwell. Looks like we’ll be walking the rest of the way down.”

“Alright, you heard her,” Lorenzo instructed, sliding the APC’s door open. “Out you go,” he added, waving the agents passed him as they filed out, weapons drawn, finally bringing up the rear and shutting the civilians and his advisor inside the armored vehicle. 

Once more, Quinn ran checks on the transmissions from the team as they descended passed the large, glowing “Sub-01” blazoned on the wall of an internal stairwell. “We’re getting some interference,” Quinn informed them, watching as static encroached upon the video feed. 

“Probably from the engine,” Yosefi suggested, watching the team’s steady progress over the colonel’s shoulder. 

Quinn covered the mic from his headset and turned to them both. “It’s a bit late to ask this, but we need to know whether there will be any negative repercussions if a firefight breaks out.”

“What?” Yosefi asked, helpfully.

Quatre bit his lip. “The smart gun is the heaviest of the weapons they took with them, right?” Quinn nodded, and so he concluded, “Based on where the colonists are holed up, they should be far enough away from the reactive materials. But you may want to encourage them to avoid overusing lethal force.”

Quinn smirked and removed his hand from the mic. “Chief, in the off-chance we lose comms in the lower levels – recommend you and the team keep in mind you’re entering a fusion reactor. Stay frosty.”

“Roger that,” Lorenzo returned, his voice crackling over the audio. 

From the quiet of the APC, the three of them watched the team descend deeper into the atmosphere engine. There was no idle talk, not this time. Pipes and vents hissed over the agents’ mics as they passed blinking lights at abandoned control terminals and system monitors. The atmosphere engine was designed to run on automation, but not indefinitely. Quatre wondered how long it had stood unattended, and bit his lip.

“This may be cliché,” Quatre murmured, “but I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Relax,” Yosefi assured. “These agents are best, right?” 

Quatre didn’t deign the man’s comment with an answer. Watching the feed from Trowa’s shoulder-mounted body camera, he inhaled sharply. Climbing up along the walls of the stairwell that led down to sub-level 04 was something that almost looked…organic. “What is that?” he asked, leaning forward, bracing his hands on the desktop next to Quinn.

“Chief…?” Quinn asked. 

“I get the distinct impression you guys didn’t build this,” one of the agents commented, looking back at Wufei’s camera to meet the gazes of the men still in the APC.

“Nobody touch anything,” Lorenzo ordered. “And be ready for whatever comes our way – there are three hundred people down here that need our help. Let’s go.”

As the team descended into the gloom, a few of the agents panned their cameras once they’d reached the bottom of the stairwell. Glossy, almost oily, tendrils of cable and something like charred whale bones coated the walls, meeting on the ceiling above. 

“Stay tight, team,” Lorenzo reminded them. “This is not national geographic time.”

“Chief – ten o’clock,” Ivanov called, his feed bounding over to what looked like one of several interconnected cells. The rest of the team followed to reveal walls lined with pale bodies, cocooned in unnatural rows and columns, held to the wall by the same resin-like substance that they’d already encountered. Some of the bodies had been gored, straight through to their lungs, while others remained intact. “Jesus, who would do this?” Ivanov asked. No answer came.

“Start looking for vitals,” Lorenzo ordered, though his voice betrayed his dismay. None of the agents were keen to move too far from the rest of the group.

Through her bodycam’s electronic eyes, Quatre watched Vasquez sling her rifle and stride forward to one of the bodies. Taking hold of the man’s head, she tilted it up and back. He was young, drawn – clearly he had been down here for some time. But when the man’s eyes shot open, all of the cameras jumped backward a good half meter before settling and drawing close once more. Vasquez was telling the man something, reassuring him. 

With shuddering breath, the colonist said only, “Kill me. Now. Now, please…”

“Help me cut him down,” Vasquez said, turning to one of the other agents, who holstered his weapon and stepped forward. As the two of them took hold the colonist’s frame, the man began convulsing. “He’s seizing,” Vasquez hissed over the mic, sliding her hand behind the man’s head to prevent it from slamming against the wall where he was pinned. 

But then…but then…

From multiple angles, Quatre watched the man’s chest explode outward, ribs shattering and bursting through the skin. The men in the APC cursed, shaken by the unexpected violence. 

But it was the eyeless, clawed pink thing that crawled up and out of the bloody maw that turned their blood cold.

*****

The flurry of expletives over the agents’ audio feed matched those in the cabin. The...creature hung from the dead colonist’s ribcage, blood spattered and screeching at the team gathered around. Someone – they couldn’t be sure who – had the sense to order one of the agents burn it, and Ivanov let loose a stream of flames that engulfed both the human body and its unnatural parasite. 

In the lull that followed...something changed. Heero could feel it sliding up is arms and into his spine. He looked up and caught Wufei and Trowa’s gazes, finding them similarly concerned. He immediately turned away from the carnage against the wall and took aim at the sinister darkness that encircled them. Something was moving. 

Correction – a lot of somethings were moving. Glancing down at the motion tracker attached at his hip, he announced, “Movement.”

“Where?” Lorenzo demanded, joining him as the rest of the team moved into defensive formations. 

Heero did a quick sweep with the tracker and grimaced. “Everywhere.” 

“I don’t have anything on infrared,” Trowa weighed in from the other side of the group, his smart gun aimed down a series of corridors that led deeper into the structure. 

“But what if they don’t show up on infrared,” Guinto suggested, the tell-tale sign of panic scratching its way into his words.

“Stay cool, Guinto,” Lorenzo instructed. “Everyone check your six, watch your team, and engage with short controlled bursts.”

No sooner had the words left his lips than the walls came alive and fell upon them with claws and teeth.

*****

Back in the APC, the three men watched in horror as the situation several stories below exploded in waves of gunfire and screaming. “Quinn!” Quatre cried, shaking the colonel’s shoulder violently. “Quinn, call them back!”

Yosefi started. “But we don’t know what—”

“Call them back, Quinn!”

Into his headset, the colonel called, “Lorenzo? Lorenzo, do you read?” Static and growing hysteria was the only response. “Lorenzo, Vasquez, Chang – do you copy? Fall back, I repeat – fall back!” On the monitors before them, there was no change. “Fuck,” Quinn cursed. “Fuck they can’t hear us.”

“How much force can this thing take?” Quatre asked. “Quinn!” he shouted when the other man didn’t respond.

“It’s a wall-smasher. Why?”

“Keep hailing them,” Quatre ordered and pivoted on his heel. Slipping into the APC’s cabin, he sealed the door behind him, and climbed into the seat. Picking up the headset Vasquez had abandoned on the dashboard when they first arrived, he called back to Quinn and Yosefi, “Strap in.” 

Revving the engine, he sent up a quick prayer that he remembered where the loadbearing walls were.

*****

The gunfire was constant. 

There was no end of them, these shadowy things that spring-boarded off of the very walls themselves to prey on them from above. In the core, surrounded by walls lined with dead colonists, Heero had watched in horror as one of them had overcome Vasquez; another had lanced Lorenzo with its spiked tail. He had lost track of the others and he had realized too late in the chaos and the darkness that they were being picked off. 

By unanimous consensus, those who remained standing fled the confines of the sub-level four, retreating up stairwells, the creatures hot on their tail. Guinto had disappeared somewhere just before they’d reached sub-level three; Ivanov soon after they reached two. Their screams still rang in his ears. 

And now there were three. As Trowa covered their rear, Heero and Wufei picked off whatever approached from the front as they fought their way to the floors above. As they rounded a corner somewhere on sub-level one, there was a horrendous roar and the floor trembled. With a great bang, the wall before them collapsed inward and the APC climbed the rubble, skidding to a stop meters away.

Slinging his rifle, Wufei sprinted to the door and slid it aside while Heero and Trowa covered him. “Get in!” Trowa shouted from behind them as they climbed inside. He himself backed in, laying down suppressive fire until the APC reversed violently out the hole it had gouged in the wall. On the move, he stepped away from the open door and moved to slide the hatch shut.

But before they could get it locked, a pair of black claws pinned the hatch open and shoved the door aside once more. Heero lunged forward to help as Trowa was forced backward with the counter-force, his boots skidding on the APC’s floor paneling. Together they threw their combined weight forward against the door, jostled by the APC’s speedy retreat back up through the atmosphere engine’s service ramp. It was stronger than them, stronger than them both, Heero realized as he watched the thing push itself inside with little difficulty.

In the commotion that followed, Quinn bounded to his feet and loaded the chamber of his handgun with practiced ease. As the monstrosity took one step up into the APC, he closed the distance between them shoved the barrel of his gun into the creature’s mouth. “Eat shit,” Quinn snapped, pulling the trigger. 

The creature’s bulbous black head exploded in a hiss of noxious steam, the bullet ripping through its cranium. As the thing fell away, Trowa and Heero slammed the door shut in its wake, but not before a pungent, vaguely green liquid arced into the cabin and struck the side of the colonel’s face. The man screamed, hands flying to his head as he dropped his gun, which skittered away as the APC roared forward in retreat. 

As the man dropped to the floor, Wufei tore free the spare med kid and dove to assist. Heero heard the other man shouting at Quinn, “Dammit, you asshole! You _do not_ get to die on us! Not now!” as if the other man really had a choice in the matter.

Recovering his footing, Heero did a quick head count and found them conspicuously missing one. In the mayhem, he demanded to the open air, “Where’s Winner?” 

Yosefi dragged his gaze up from the bloody scene unfolding on the floor before him. Wide-eyed, he sputtered, “He locked himself in the cabin. Who did you think was driving?”

Pivoting back to the locked door, Heero bounded over Wufei and turned his efforts to get their rescuer’s attention over Quinn’s screaming behind him. “Quatre!” he shouted, slamming his fists against the door. “Quatre we’re out! You’re grinding the axle!” When no response came, he dug his fingers into the electrical panel by his hip and broke the compartment open. Kneeling down, he dug at the wires until he found the two that would open the hatch. Jostled as the APC bounced and bucked over Europa’s uneven terrain, he reconnected the circuit and the door retracted into the wall.

Darting inside, Heero moved to Quatre’s side and braced his hands against the other man, one at his shoulder, the other on the hand that kept the stick in gear. “Quatre, I think you steamrolled one too many of those things,” he told him. “The treads are gone. Slow down, slow down…”

Under gentle pressure, Quatre let off the gas and seemed to return to himself. As they rolled to a halt some distance away from the complex, Quatre murmured, “We couldn’t communicate with you – there was too much interference, not enough time. And I wouldn’t leave you.”

Heero kept his eyes locked on the other man, and tried to fight the images that rose unbidden to his mind’s eye. Carnage and fire and shadows that moved, and the absolute certainty that monsters were real.

As Quatre drew the APC to stop, he finally turned to meet Heero’s gaze. When he did so, Heero said only, “Thank you.” 

Standing, Heero told him, “Shut it down. The APC isn’t going much further. Here’s as good a place to stop as any.” Quatre nodded and turned away.

Exiting the fore cabin, Heero paused at the sight of Wufei sitting with his back pressed up against the comms console. One of his knees was drawn up, his gaze squarely fixed on Quinn’s motionless body that lay prone on the floor. He had apparently moved the colonel out of the way to keep both of the doors clear, leaving only a corroded hole in the APC’s flooring – the man’s face was covered with a powder blue flak jacket, which made it seem all the more grotesque. Wufei met his eyes and shook his head to the unasked question. Heero sighed, and then asked, “Yosefi?”

Wufei offered a half-hearted and mirthless laugh, gesturing generally to the back of the APC. “Probably getting reacquainted with his lunch, if I had to guess.” The man moved to brush a stray hair out of his face and seemed at the last minute to think better of it, remembering the blood coating his hands. He opted instead to rub the grime on his pants and pushed himself up from the floor. “Quatre?”

“He’s okay,” Hero reassured. The two of them slipped into silence. Heero’s gaze drifting to Trowa, who sat at the jump seat, the heels of his hands digging into his eye sockets. 

“Hey, look at this.”

At Wufei’s call, Heero turned and moved to join him in front of the panel of monitors. “What is it?”

“The cameras are all shot, but look at the readings,” Wufei instructed, tapping monitors in question. “Ivanov, Vasquez, Guinto. They’re not dead.” 

“They’re what?” Trowa demanded from behind them. Heero heard him stand and close the distance between them. “Impossible.”

“They’re not dead. Not doing well, but not dead.” After a heavy pause, Wufei turned and asked him, “How many rounds do you have?” 

Heero felt his stomach drop at the question. Every ounce of self-preservation told him to run as far and fast as he could away from this place. But rather than say as much, he turned his eyes from the monitors and read the gauge on his rifle. The little red number blinked up at him, cold in its certainty. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back with a defeated sigh. “Thirteen.”

“Wait, wait,” Yosefi began as he approached from the back of the APC, his hands up and splayed as if to talk down a pair of jumpers. “You can’t honestly be thinking of going back in there.”

“We don’t leave our people behind,” Trowa told him, as if the words were bitter.

“Trust me – I give you express permission to leave them behind.”

“Fuck you,” Wufei snapped. “We are not abandoning those people to die down there.”

It was at this moment that Quatre strode forward from the cabin to get a closer look at the readings. “No…” he murmured, tapping the screens. “Your people are already dead – they just don’t know it yet.” Turning to the others, he clarified, “These readings are too low to be stable. If they’re being kept alive, it’s for a reason.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth that a light went on in Heero’s head. “The colonists,” he muttered, drawing Wufei’s attention. “They’re being…infected, like the colonists we saw. The ones cocooned along the wall.”

Trowa cursed under his breath, while Wufei closed his eyes against the thought, mourning the inevitable loss. “Ugly way to die,” he said, more to himself than the others.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Quatre countered, suddenly energized. “I mean…why the hell did I load those missiles on the drop ship if we weren’t going to use them? We know where those – those _things_ are, and we know where the victims are. The atmosphere engine is essentially a compact fusion reactor. You hit it, everything goes. The colony, those creatures, everything.”

“I like this idea,” Trowa offered. “I like it a lot.”

“No, wait,” Yosefi countered, sounding particularly frustrated and fearful. “I own half of this project and I cannot allow you to unilaterally terminate the whole thing, especially not so absolutely. Blowing the engine would destroy any and all chances of rebuilding Europa. Beyond the very serious _political ramifications_ of doing that, the two of us have sunk trillions into this project—”

“And you can bill me for your other half,” Quatre quipped, his eyes narrowing. “And if the agents here agree with this course of action—”

“Quatre, be reasonable,” the other man urged. “These guys – they’re just Preventer’s infantry. Foot soldiers. They can’t make decisions like this.” He paled, suddenly realizing the company he was in, and offered a brief, “I mean no offense, it’s just—I mean—you’re not trained for this.”

“No, I don’t think we have a CONOP [[1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5409851/chapters/12499040#chapter_4_endnotes)] for this specific situation, I’ll give you that,” Wufei shot back, his voice flat.

“Mohsen,” Quatre began, “it ultimately doesn’t matter what you or I think. This is a Preventers mission. We relinquished our authority over what happened here the moment we agreed to fly with the team. With Lorenzo and Quinn both gone, and assuming I’m reading the designations correctly, that puts Agent Chang in charge....wouldn’t it?” he added centering his sites on Wufei. 

It seemed answering was painful. “Yes, that’s correct,” Wufei acknowledged. 

“Good,” Quatre said with a nod, his gaze shifting to Yosefi. “And what would be your prescriptive action, Agent Chang?”

There was a heavy pause while the others waited. Into the microphone mounted to his helmet, he said, “Duo, do you copy?”

“I’m here.” The other man’s voice sounded heavy, hoarse. Heero remembered with a start their pilot would have been listening in on their progress, not one to be left out of the action. He knew they were all that was left.

“Come get us. We’ll blow the place from the air.”

“Roger that.”

*****

Duo pulled the harness straps over his chest and refitted the silver buckle. Flipping switches across the dash, he honed in on the APC’s location and took the drop ship into the air. In the misty distance, he could see a dull red glow – flares, he assumed – creep into existence in Europa’s heavy darkness, the ever-present gas planet looming overhead. He brought the ship down low and slow in anticipation of a walk-on boarding by those who remained from their team.

Behind him, the cabin door hissed as it opened. “What the—” Duo muttered to himself, turning.

 _Teeth_ , registered first. And then, _Big._

As the monstrous thing lunged for him, he unfastened his harness and leapt up out of his seat. He just managed to kick his legs out, catching the thing in the chest with his boots, as it fell on him. The force of the attack pinned him to the console while long, spindly black arms clawed at him, shredding his jacket and slicing open his cheek. With a desperate cry, he pushed back with all his might, jostling the control column with his hip as he kicked at the thing’s skeletal ribcage. As the drop ship careened to the side, Duo watched the creature fall back out the cabin door into the shadows beyond. 

Eyes still locked on the hatch from which the nightmare had come, he slammed his palm flat against the eject button without a second thought.

*****

As the drop ship came in for approach, Wufei watched it pitch violently to the side seconds before the cabin was blasted free from the hull with the power of the ship’s ejection system. “Duo!” he gasped, his heart wrenching violently as he watched the parachute struggle and eventually fail to inflate as the cabin hurdled to the ground several hundred meters away. 

Beside him, he vaguely registered Barton shout, “Incoming!” before grabbing his arm and throwing the two of them behind one of the rocky outcroppings near the rendezvous point. As the group scattered, the ship drove itself to the ground, hurtling fire and debris as it dug its own grave. 

As the dust settled, Wufei bounded to his feet, eyes searching the horizon for the cabin’s final resting place. There was a hand on his arm and he rounded on its owner, nearly lashing out. 

He found Heero standing with him, and his undirected rage flagged like a suffocated flame. “Take Trowa and go get him,” Heero told him. “I’ll take the others back to the compound. We’ll meet you back at the ops center.”

“Right,” he breathed. Meeting Trowa’s ever-steady gaze, the two of them took off to the east. 

Behind them, Yosefi’s voice carried on the wind at their heels. “Where are _they_ going?”

“To get our pilot. Let’s move.”

“But isn’t he supposed to be in charge?”

“ _Move_!”

The voices faded in the distance over the roar of the moon’s gusts of wind and his own pounding heart. As he and Trowa vaulted over the rocky ground and icy gullies, they closed the distance on the escape pod. 

Suddenly, Trowa drew to a halt and caught his arm to bring him up a short as well. Ahead of them, they saw a figure loom in the darkness, obscured by the low cloud cover. Wufei struggled to free his arm and turned to argue, “Trowa—”

“Wait.” The man’s face was trained on the figure and then Wufei understood. It was too dark to know for sure, to be absolutely certain whether it was…human or not. And so they waited and watched the figure approach. And then it stumbled, falling to the ground, and Trowa released his arm. Bolting forward he said only, “Go.”

Together, they closed the distance and skidded to a stop only when they’d reached the prone, broken body of Duo Maxwell. Wufei dropped to his knees and rolled the other man over, quickly assessing the damage. The man’s right leg was bent in the wrong places, his arms were curled up against his ribs, and his head was bleeding profusely, but from where Wufei couldn’t tell. Duo’s blue eyes stared up at him, wide and terrified. “It’s okay, Duo. We’ve got you.”

Duo’s right hand shot forward, and clasped the front of his camouflaged jacket in spite of several clearly broken fingers. “It was in the ship,” he told him, his voice tight. “It was in the ship!”

“We gotta go,” Trowa told him, looking up past the horizon before them, back toward the dark silhouette of the atmosphere engine. “Now.”

“Okay, okay,” Wufei stuttered, prying Duo’s shattered fingers off of him. A strangled sound escaped Duo’s lips as they parted and he pulled away to make room for Trowa.

As delicately as possible, Trowa slid his arms under the fallen man and hefted him into the air with what sounded like a sincere apology as Duo cried out again, this time clearly in pain. Wufei watched his eyes roll up and back, almost escaping into blessed unconsciousness before the pain brought him barreling back. 

As they turned and sprinted as quickly as they could back toward the distant compound, Wufei was careful to stay to Trowa’s right, within Duo’s line of sight, and tried desperately to avoid thinking of the things they were still running from. Were they out there with them? Had they been drawn out by the crash? What did Duo mean that there had been one on the ship? 

Best not to think about it, not now. Not until they could lock themselves in tight against the night to come.

But then his thoughts drifted to the barricades they’d seen when they first arrived and understanding slowly bloomed in his belly, black and toxic – they were not going to win this fight.

*****

Back at the compound, Quatre watched Trowa and Wufei bring Duo in and the lot of them made a beeline for medical, he and Yosefi chasing after the agents. There was a lot of blood, but he didn’t realize the extent of the damage until they laid him out and started removing his clothes. He felt a calm come over him, something familiar that he hadn’t felt in years, and moved to the CMO’s tech console. 

“What are you doing?” Yosefi asked him.

“There’s an incubator built into the wall,” Quatre explained, “a med pod. If we can redirect some of the lab’s power to it, we should be able to save him…” On the gurney, he could hear the muffled popping of bones snapping back into place, likely under Heero’s skillful care. The thought turned his stomach.

The lights overhead flickered and in response, a long white tube extended out from a line of compartments on the far end of the room and flickered to life, its lid extending up and out. The three agents spotted the movement, and in unison took hold of the pilot that still lay unconscious between them. Someone counted to three, and they moved him from the medical gurney to the incubator. Wufei and Trowa quickly peeled and stuck sensors on the man’s head and chest moments before Heero shut the lid and hit the start sequence. Activated, the machine hummed and withdrew back into the wall and a soothing, gold light spilled out from inside the tube into the darkened lab. 

The five of them stood in stunned silence then, the only sound their heavy breathing and the ringing in their ears. 

After several minutes, someone asked, “What now?”

From across the room, Quatre watched Wufei reach out and touch the glass of the incubator with quiet reverence, his bloodied fingers leaving dark trails on the blinking panel. Taking a deep breath, he turned to them and said, “We leave him here and watch the lab feed from the operations center. We can push the med lab’s readings up to the main system and we’ll track his progress from there. The rest of us…we count bullets.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] CONOP = Concept of Operations


	5. Interlude

“Alright, so,” Heero began, waving a hand over a small mound of armaments, “after aggregating what we brought out of the drop ship when we first arrived, and salvaging what we could from the crash wreckage, this is all we have.”

“Final tally?” Wufei asked.

“Four hand-held welding torches. Two flamethrowers – one of which is only half-full. Five pulse rifles with 50 rounds and a full cartridge of grenades each. And four fully-loaded sentry rifle units.”

“And the smart gun?” Wufei prompted, turning to Trowa.

“Dropped it in the basement when I ran out of ammo,” the other man responded and then shrugged almost apologetically. “It was slowing me down.”

“We wouldn’t have had any extra ammunition for it anyway, as the case stands,” Heero added. “Oh,” he continued, raising two handguns which Wufei recognized as Quinn’s and Yuy’s own, “and these. But once they’re spent, that’s it.”

 _Not great_ , Wufei thought. _Not even good, either._ They could perhaps manage to defend themselves for a time, but not from a full assault…if that’s how they had to think about it. He shook his head and stepped to the stacked, reinforced cases and opened the top one. The sentry gun rested, silent and deadly, inside the foam padding. “These may come in handy, given our current situation.”

“What are you looking at?” 

Wufei turned at Yosefi’s question to find Quatre once more at the schematic table. With a sidelong glance at the other two agents, they unanimously moved away from the battered crates and weapons to join the other men. On the table was a layered image of the compound’s main floor – their floor, he realized. 

“Our colonists barricaded themselves in, but didn’t know where the attacks were coming from,” Quatre ventured. Tapping the screen, the schematic zoomed in on a long service tunnel that ran the distance between the compound itself and the atmosphere engine. “I’d harbor a guess that this is the main access point – it enters the engine not far from where we picked you all up. If they take the corridor down and into the compound, they have to get through two sets of blast doors. But once they do, they can disperse anywhere within the compound.”

“So how do we stop them from getting to us specifically?” Yosefi asked.

“We can seal the doors with the welding torches,” Heero suggested, nodding his head back toward their miniature armory. “It’s unlikely to stop them, but it might slow them down a bit.”

“We can do the same here and here,” Trowa added, indicating two corridor junctions on either end of their floor. “They would have to come at the ops center at one end or the other end. We can drop the fire doors to this corridor specifically and then set up the sentries just outside. Maximize their rotational movement to shoot anything that moves on the other side.”

“Sounds like as good a plan as any,” Wufei approved. “Heero, with me. We’ll seal the doors to the service corridor between us and the hive.” The other man nodded and returned to the makeshift armory to collect the welding torches. “Quatre, Trowa – take the sentries down and get those set up. I’d just kindly ask you all to wait until we’re back before you lock us up.”

“Of course,” Trowa smirked back.

“What about me?” Yosefi asked him. “What can I do to help?”

“Watch the med lab,” Heero answered as he returned to the group, “and the live feed from the corridors. You see anything that’s not us, you call it in.” Tossing the other man one of their walkie talkies, he nodded to Wufei and the two of them headed out the operations center’s main door. 

*****

The sentry guns were lighter than he had expected, given the size of their casings. Quatre and Trowa had managed to each carry one down to either end of the main corridor and preposition them for set-up. Per Wufei’s request, they began assembly at the opposite end of the hallway from which Heero and Wufei had disappeared on the way to the service corridor connecting the compound to the atmosphere engine. 

Once he had secured the tripod of his gun to the grated floor underfoot, Quatre stood and asked, “How do we know if we’ve set up them up correctly?”

Trowa didn’t look up as he booted the guns’ tracking system from a monitor he held in his hand. The gun barrels rotated one way and then the other before swiveling up and then down, tracking for movement across the juncture. “Coverage looks good,” Trowa told him. “We need something for them to shoot at…” 

The two of them glanced around the wreckage of the corridor, looking for something large enough to serve as a target. Quatre knelt to the floor and retrieved a light-weight metal panel which appeared to have been pulled from the wall some ways away. He flipped it over in his hands and asked, “Think this’ll work?”

Trowa smirked. “Sentry guns test one. Fire in the hole.”

At the command, Quatre tossed the panel over the two tripods, the metal sheet flipping over-end in midair. The guns came to life instantaneously, riddling the panel with armor-piercing bullets as it fell to the ground and lay still. The sudden roar of gunfire left Quatre shielding his ears while Trowa winced beside him. Once the target was certifiably neutralized, the two of them backed away from the weaponry. 

“I’d say it works,” Trowa told him.

“God, that was loud,” Quatre answered, his ears still ringing. “Think it attracted attention?”

“Let’s not find out,” Trowa suggested, using the control panel on the wall to close the fire door behind them as they stepped across the threshold. “I’ll disconnect the wiring, if you’d be so kind to do the honors…”

Quatre smiled at that and toggled the welding torch. With a pop and a hiss, the blue flame flashed into existence and he traced the seam of the door and its frame, the reinforced metal slowly melting together. A moment later, Trowa joined him, tracing the other side of the door. Once complete, they shut off the welders and stood back. 

Over the walkie talkie, Quatre hailed, “First door is secured and armed. Heading to door number two.”

Wufei responded, his voice heavy with static. “We’re almost back – probably pass you en route. Both blast doors are sealed.” 

“Roger that,” Quatre acknowledged and hooked the device through a belt loop. He and Trowa walked in silence for a time until he said at last, “I’m sorry you’re all involved in this.”

Trowa’s stride faltered at the admission and he paused, which drew Quatre up short a few steps ahead of him. “Why?” he asked.

Quatre struggled to find the right words. At last, he shrugged and answered, “I thought a mutiny would be the worst of it. I thought we’d be dealing with _people_. I don’t know what happened here, or what those things are. But…people are dead, your teammates included. It’s my facility,” he concluded, “I bear that responsibility.”

To his surprise, Trowa sighed heavily. “It’s only _half_ your facility,” he reasoned. “And it’s not like you told that crew to go out and bring back parasitic samples of a close encounter.” He began to walk again, and slung a long arm over Quatre’s shoulder as he did so, pulling the other man with him. “People are dead, yes. But Objective One is to seal the doors. Objective Two is to get the rest of us out of here. Matters of responsibility can be sorted out later, okay?”

“Okay,” Quatre acquiesced as they caught sight of Heero and Wufei returning to the ops center from the other end of the corridor. 

*****

After they had passed Trowa and Quatre en route to the ops center, Heero had given him a nudge towards medical. Wufei had protested at first, complaints on his lips, until he caught Heero’s eye. Gentle reassurance met his gaze and he’d deflated as much as he could allow, wary of the CCTV feeding into the ops center. With a nod and a final glance up at the video camera mounted into the ceiling panels, they parted ways and Wufei had walked further down the hall to medical. 

The lab was quiet, save for the gentle hum of the pod in the far wall. Pointedly ignoring the jarred parasites in the opposite corner, Wufei strode forward and pulled up the med pod’s touch screen monitor, pausing the process through which it was cycling. He tapped a few additional buttons, and on command the tube ejected from the wall as it had done before, the lid swinging up like some high tech coffin. 

He tried not to think about that part.

“Duo,” he whispered instead, his fingers feather light on the man’s cheek. “Duo, can you hear me?”

He watched has the man’s forehead scrunched in discomfort and disorientation, the lids of his eyes blinking heavily up at him before sliding shut against the dim lights of the med lab. “‘Fei?”

“I’m here,” he assured him, his voice barely above a whisper. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I was sent through a trash compactor,” Duo offered. “Tired. Bones feel squishy…”

“Your readings are still off,” Wufei informed him. “There’s still some swelling in the brain, and your fractures haven’t fully healed yet. We’ll have to put you back under.”

“‘Fei…” Wufei looked up and found the other man’s blue eyes locked on him with surprising lucidity. “It was in the ship. It was in the ship with me.” Duo’s eyes closed once more, as if it was too much effort to keep them open. “It waited till I was in the air, till there was nowhere else for me to go. It knew how to open the door…”

Wufei hushed him, his fingers once more caressing the flushed, swollen skin of the man’s face. Leaning down, he brushed his lips over Duo’s brow and urged him to sleep once more before stepping away and restarting the incubator’s system.


	6. Discoveries

“Can’t we reroute some of the power from the main compound, maybe shock the comms system back to life?” Yosefi suggested.

Quatre worried his lip before admitting, “We could…but that would mean shutting off the med pod—”

“So no,” Yosefi acknowledged, cutting in.

“—and there’s no guarantee it would work,” Quatre reminded him. 

They had been at this for over an hour, trying to hodge-podge and piece back together a system map which had gone AWOL within its own complex. The electrical grids had been isolated from one another and the comms system was down entirely. It was as if the whole network had been taken down deliberately, but for what reason, Quatre didn’t know. It was easier to fight monsters in the light, after all.

“Alright, so…” Turning to Heero, who sat at the comms terminal, Yosefi asked, “Any luck diagnosing our connection issues?”

Heero shook his head, his fingers flying over the terminal’s keyboard. The system repeatedly spat back error messages, almost vindictively. “Not from here there’s not. I had hoped it was a calibration issue, which can be corrected easily enough, or even a power failure for the same reason. But no luck on either front at this point. As far know, the satellite array is fine; it’s the connection from here that’s shot.”

“What could’ve caused this?” Yosefi asked him.

Heero shrugged and pushed away from the terminal, pivoting the chair to face them. “Any number of things. Power surge. Faulty cabling. Hardware failure. All I know is that it’s not a software issue – the problem lies somewhere within the compound.”

“They should really put timers on those things…” The group turned to find Trowa leaning over the feed from the medical bay. Tapping the screen – which displayed a disoriented Duo Maxwell pushing himself up off the med pod’s pallet – he informed them, “Our shake-n-bake pilot is done.”

*****

“Your readings look good,” Heero said, running his hands over Duo’s head while his eyes scanned the med pod’s reports as they scrolled across the screen. Pulling a small pen light from a pocket, he flashed Duo’s eyes and watched the pupils dilate as normal. “How do you feel?”

“Like a soufflé that’s just been pulled from an oven,” Duo responded with a lopsided grin, “pipin’ hot and ready to collapse.” The answer earned him a derisive snort of laughter from Wufei, who otherwise stood across from them with his arms crossed over his chest and his expression sour. Their eyes met, but Wufei said nothing. 

Heero meanwhile and moved down to examine his arms and legs. “Bones seem to have healed moderately well. I expect there’s still extensive fracturing, but you should at least be able to put weight on them now.” He straightened and added, his tone apologetic, “You may need surgery when we get back. These machines are designed to stabilize and repair, but they only work with what they get.”

Duo shrugged. “I’m alive. That was the point, right?” When neither Heero nor Wufei offered any kind of response, Duo asked, “Can you guys fill me in?”

Wufei pushed away from the desk he’d been leaning against, his stride slow and heavy as he approached. Duo recognized it immediately as fatigue. “We believe those… _things_ have been moving back and forth between the compound and the atmosphere engine through a service corridor that connect the two. We’ve sealed both blast doors, and have done the same with the two entry points for this sector. We’ve also armed either end with robotic sentries set to shoot anything that moves on the other side of the fire doors on this level.”

“You’re not seriously trying to wait these things out, are you?” Duo prompted, suddenly very concerned. “Rescue wouldn’t be sent for at least a week without contact, and I’ve got news for you—”

“We weren’t waiting on rescue,” Heero countered gently. “We were waiting on you.”

At this Duo bit his lip, his eyes jumping to Wufei before falling to study his hands. “Okay,” his voice faltering. Clearing his throat, he straightened and tried again. “Okay – so what now?”

“For now…we need to keep you under observation for at least a couple hours,” Wufei told him. “We need to know that you’re actually stable.”

“Versus ‘Gundam pilot stable?’” Duo asked him, offering another smile. He was relieved to see Wufei and Heero relax into this, if only slightly.

“Precisely,” Wufei told him. “Quatre and the others are up at the ops center trying to find a way to reestablish comms with HQ or – better yet – the _EGERIA_.” Turning to Heero he asked, “How are you doing? When did you last sleep?” 

Duo’s gaze followed Wufei’s and watched Heero sigh, almost wilting under the scrutiny. “Probably on our way down here,” Heero answered.

“Why don’t you guys take shifts then?” Duo asked. “I’ll serve as guard dog and ya’ll can just do some hot-racking here on the cot.”

The other two men shared an unspoken thought, and Heero shrugged. “I don’t see why not.” 

The two of them helped Duo hop down off the med pod’s sleeping pallet, and although he appreciated the gesture, he had to fight the urge to brush off their helping hands. The floor was cold under his bare feet and he started to shiver, very much aware of his current state of undress. 

Sensing his discomfort, Heero relinquished his grip on his arm – relying on Wufei to keep him stable – and produced a spare set of fatigues from where Duo wasn’t sure. With some awkwardness which would have had Duo chuckling if his ribs weren’t so damn sore, Heero and Wufei had helped him into the offered clothing. It was at least a size too big, Duo noted, rolling the sleeves up to his elbow. 

Once dressed, Wufei muttered something about them needing to get him a pair of boots once they were sure his feet wouldn’t swell in them as Heero crossed to the cot in the corner of the room and all but collapsed upon it, soon dead to the world.

Duo chuckled at the sight. _Figures_. Turning to Wufei, he asked, “Hey…we get anything more on my bunk mates?” He nodded toward the glass tubes across the room, their parasitic contents bobbing up and down, as Wufei helped him to the CMO’s desk.

“Nothing beyond what Vasquez found out earlier,” Wufei told him. 

“I might do some digging if it’s alright with you, boss,” Duo told him. “I feel like there’s something more to this that we’re not tracking.”

“Dig away,” Wufei told him, setting the other man down on the padded office chair. “I’ll be over in ops if you needed me.” He pointed up at the video camera on the ceiling. “Eyes in the sky.”

Duo offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile and watched Wufei walk away. In the silence that followed – punctuated by Heero’s even breathing coming from behind him – he booted the CMO’s computer console. “Alright buddy, let’s see what else you have to tell us…”

*****

He was dreaming. He knew that much. He had the tendency to have rather lucid forays into his subconscious. 

He was standing, his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets against the chill of an autumn sun. He stood in a clearing, a glade, surrounded by tall evergreen trees. The grass that swallowed him had browned to a soft sepia, the wispy ends of seed pods stretching up out of the earth to brush his shoulders. He was waiting for something. Or rather, someone. 

He remembered this dream, this reality. He was a child then, already too familiar with violence and death. But now in the quiet of this forest glen, there was someone he was waiting for, and he knew she only brought destruction with her. It would follow on her small heels as they pounded forest floor beneath her, reeking of havoc and jet fuel and smoke. He would help her escape, and once more he would be alone in the world.

Perhaps the destruction followed _him_ , and she served only as a foil, a mirror to reflect and refract his true self back upon him. It wasn’t hard to imagine, really.

“Trowa…” a voice urged, sounding insistent. There was gentle pressure on his shoulder, followed by a good shake. “Trowa, you need to get up. There’s something we gotta tell the others.”

*****

“So while you all have been napping and I’ve been guarding your bedtime like some dashingly handsome gargoyle, I’ve been looking into the chief medical officer’s records,” Duo informed them. The survivors of their little band of miscreants stood clustered around the CMO’s desk – which Duo still occupied, his legs crossed up on the chair. Trowa suspected that had as much to do with his injuries as it did with the chill that had settled over the compound. Trowa suspected Duo had not slept since coming out of the incubator, judging by the lack of color to his face.

“I thought those records were locked down,” Yosefi said, coming around to stand closer to the CMO’s desk. From his place along the wall, Trowa thought Duo physically withdrew at the approach. “No one should be able to get into those files without the necessary permissions and pass codes.”

Duo leveled the man with a dark look. “Did I fucking stutter?”

“Easy,” Wufei told the other man, gentle but firm as he too took a step forward. After a beat, he asked, “What did you find?”

“Those men were sent to investigate a site, but it sure as shit wasn’t a malfunctioning sensor,” he informed them. “According to the CMO’s records, they were sent to investigate and _collect samples_. They were told to do this. In advance.”

“That’s impossible,” Quatre countered, his face betraying honest confusion.

“Not if your initials are ‘M.Y.’…”

A second’s dawning realization passed and Quatre whirled on his business partner. “You _knew_ about this?” he demanded between gritted teeth.

“No, of course not!” Yosefi snapped, but his sudden flush betrayed him.

“What did you send them to, Mohsen?” Quatre demanded. 

Before the other man could respond, Duo answered for him. “According to the _original_ report and transmission, these guys had gone to the site and discovered what the CMO records as a,” Duo paused to look at the screen and quoted, “‘derelict craft, one of unknown origin, but is unlikely at this time to be deemed man-made.’” Turning back to the group, his eyes fixed on Yosefi. “ _You_ received that transmission, sir. You also received periodic updates from the CMO on the status of the team that you sent out. It wasn’t until comms went down here on the colony that you began forwarding redacted versions of the transmissions to WEI.

“So congratulations,” Duo finished, his voice flat. “You’ve discovered aliens. You might want to start coming up with cute names for these things and a stellar PR campaign because marketing after this fiasco is going to be a bitch.”

“Yes, damn you,” Yosefi raged, finally throwing his arms up in the air. “Yes, I sent them to look at the site! Yes, I told them to take samples. But think of it – a _new species_. What could this tell us about life in our solar system, life _beyond it_? Think of what this could mean, Quatre.”

“Three hundred and eight people are _dead_ , Mohsen, including our Preventers team,” Quatre countered, his eyes narrowing. “And they’re dead because you _told them to bring it back_!”

“We don’t know that, not really—”

Trowa snorted, the outburst startling himself and the others and soundly derailing Yosefi’s counter attack. “Sorry,” he apologized, “It’s only that my bullshit gauge just reached new and dangerous levels.”

Yosefi chose to ignore him and turned back to Quatre. “This was for science. Sometimes there’s collateral damage.”

Trowa could hardly believe the admission; apparently neither could Winner, who shot back, “Three hundred and eight people hardly constitute ‘collateral damage,’ Mohsen. That’s negligence and mass murder.”

“I didn’t know that what they would find would _kill_ them!”

“Even so – it could have been radiation poisoning. It could have been an intelligent species. It could have just been pirates, for God’s sake,” Quatre argued. “It doesn’t matter – none of these people were prepared for any of these contingencies. You knew there was a risk, and you sent them anyway.”

“Ano…Sorry to interrupt…” 

Those assembled turned to find Heero in the doorway of the med lab, every part of him radiating tension. Trowa pushed himself up off the wall, alert and ready. Wufei exhaled in a huff and turned back to Yosefi as he asked over his shoulder, “What is it, Heero?”

“I think you might want to come see this…”

*****

“What are we waiting for, Heero?” Wufei asked, growing impatient. No sooner had he asked, however, than a plume of steam billowed up from an oversized exhaust pipe. Behind him, he could hear the collective groan of the Preventers agents and felt his own stomach plummet. In the end, all he could say was, “Shit.” 

“What is it?” Yosefi asked from the back of the party.

“The cooling tower,” Quatre supplied. “With no one manning the systems…” He trailed off, and let the silence speak for itself.

Setting his resolve, Wufei turned to Heero and pressed on, “How long do we have?”

Heero considered the question, biting his lip before answering, “Based on the intervals I’ve observed while you’ve been in med lab talking…the core is likely to go critical within the next six to seven hours.”

“Six hours?” Duo asked. “That’s it?”

“Remember that for all we know, it’s been burning itself down since before we left Earth’s orbit,” Quatre reminded him. “We have no idea when people stopped attending to it, and we’ve been in transit for over three months.”

“What happens when the core goes critical?” Trowa asked, sounding especially concerned about this new development. Wufei thought it also sounded like he already knew the answer, he just didn’t want to acknowledge it.

So he cast a glance over at Heero – who met his gaze with uncharacteristically open trepidation – before turning to Quatre. The other man responded with only, “We don’t want to be here when it goes critical.”

“Great,” Yosefi said, the word laced with acid. “Terrific. Now what?”

Wufei sighed and pressed his fingertips into his temples. He could feel a headache coming. “Now we get off this rock,” he told him. “We just need to figure out how.”

*****

“Look at this,” Quatre crowed from the other side of the room. As they approached, he pointed animatedly down at some fixed point on the schematic. 

“What have you found?” Wufei asked trying to make sense of the symbols that were on display.

“It’s the satlink hub,” Quatre explained. “It’s a redundancy for when comms go down in the compound itself. I knew there had to be one – it’s regulation – it was just a matter of finding it.” Slowly zooming out to give the assembled a better view, the compound and associated science and energy parks appeared in their most basic skeletal forms. 

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Wufei asked, sounding rather perturbed.

“Because it’s not in the main compound,” Quatre explained. “To get to it, you need to accept a higher level of risk…or have time constraints for contact,” he added, glancing in Heero’s direction.

“So, remind me, where are we in all of this?” Trowa asked. Quatre responded by double-tapping the location of the operations center on the map with his fingertip. A red marker flickered into existence and hovered a few centimeters above the board. He did the same for the satlink for good measure. Trowa’s eyes darted between the two markers and concluded, “So, between us and the hook-up is about two klicks, exposed to the elements and our neighborhood creature feature.”

“Which brings me to this.” Quatre waved his hand over the board and the schematic was reinforced with infrastructure and an expansive electrical system. “There is a tunnel – well, more a tube really – meant to protect the electrical cabling running from the satlink to the compound proper. It would be no more than 60 cm wide, probably less than that in height.”

“That’s a long way to belly-crawl on your own in the dark,” Yosefi intoned, sounding almost scared they’d send him out.

“Especially for someone your height,” Wufei observed, his voice derisive. Turning to Heero, he asked, “Want to flip a coin?”

“I’ll go,” Quatre volunteered before the other man could respond. “I’m certified for the 4L series, including remote piloting.”

Heero and Wufei exchanged a look before the latter responded, “No, you should stay here.”

“But—”

Wufei cut him off, watching Winner register the colonial Mandarin, “ _I need you here – to kill monsters, and to babysit your partner_.” [[1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5409851/chapters/12499172#chapter_6_endnotes)] 

“I’ll go.” At this the others turned to Duo, who was studying the schematic with intensity. 

“You’re not firing on all cylinders yet,” Heero argued. “You’re likely to do more damage en route.”

“Which is precisely why I should go,” Duo countered. He added, apologetically, “I’m no real good to you in a fire fight, but I sure as hell can pilot our bird down.” The others’ faces were grim but none dared argue further. Their silence became concurrence, and they shifted to business.

“How long will it take?” Wufei asked him.

“In my _current condition_ ,” Duo began giving Heero a half-hearted grin, “and the fact I’ll be crawling over electrical cables on busted arms…we’re looking at about four hours until pick-up. It’ll take me about an hour to get there, give or take. I’ll have to backdoor into the _EGERIA_ , which will eat time, and that’ll be on top of however long it takes me to override and hijack the satlink itself. Tack on 15 minutes for start-up sequences and 30 minutes to get here from orbit.”

“But that’s assuming the satlink itself isn’t down,” Yosefi reminded them. “I know no one wants to hear that – and we have no indication that it would be damaged,” he was careful to add, looking at Quatre, “but it is a possibility. What’s the Plan B?”

Duo grinned up at him from where he leaned heavily on the schematics. “Plan B was overcome by events, sir. We’re on Hotel or India [[2](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5409851/chapters/12499172#chapter_6_endnotes)] by this point.”

Wufei turned to Heero and asked him, “Does that suffice for our timeline?”

The other man nodded. “It’ll be close,” he admitted, “but doable. It doesn’t leave much window for error.”

“So no errors.”

“No pressure or anything,” Trowa muttered to Duo, who smirked. 

“Can we access the tube from here? Or do we have to go outside?” Heero asked Quatre, who was already looking.

“We should be able to access it from here,” Quatre told him, tapping a location on the schematics not far from the operations center – and thankfully well within their makeshift barricades. “We’ll have to cut through the floor panels to get to it, but it’s there.”

“Alright,” Duo said, hopping to his feet somewhat less gracefully than usual. “Let’s do this.”

The group assembled small arms and welding torches alike and moved as one out into the hallway, Heero and Trowa panning up and down the corridor, braced for any interruption. Quatre and Duo meanwhile pulled apart the floor paneling to expose the protective tube which would run the distance to the satlink. Wufei urged them aside shortly thereafter, snapping the welding torch into life with a hiss.

While they waited, Quatre got another look at Duo. The man was on edge, his jaw clenched tight, and his hands curled into fists at his side. “Are you up for this?” he asked quietly. 

Duo turned and offered a half-hearted smile. “It’s not really a matter of whether or not I’m ‘up for this,’” he told him, his voice quiet so as not to carry too far. “We need off this God-forsaken rock of yours. And between you and me, none of these other louts are small enough to fit in that hole.” 

Quatre nodded, his lips pressed into a thin line. In the distance, they could hear a heavy thud. It repeated again and again, but without any sense of steady rhythm. 

“That’s them, isn’t it?” Duo muttered, but the question was rhetorical.

“Where?” Yosefi asked them.

“The blast doors,” Quatre said. “If they keep that up, I don’t know how much longer the barriers will hold.” 

Wufei shut off the welding torch then, and pried loose the panel he had cut. Looking up at Duo, his face mirroring Quatre’s own grim resolve, he said, “In you go.”

Duo took one final deep breath and exhaled slowly, the lone betrayal of his anxiety as he strode forward and climbed into the tube, feet first. He shimmied down further until he was prone, his back supported by the heavy cabling underneath him. Once Duo was safely inside, Heero left his positon to join Wufei and Quatre kneeling on the floor by the tube while Trowa kept watch down the corridor. 

“Patch…” Wufei said, passing down a keypad with several hook-up ports down to the other man, who quickly tucked it into a pocket in his fatigues. “Torch…” he said next, handing Duo a flashlight. 

“Gun,” Heero offered, relinquishing his pistol to the man in the tube. “Try not to shoot your foot off.”

Duo snorted and offered a bitter, “Thanks, Heero,” before turning his gaze on the others. “See ya’ll in four hours,” Duo told them, with a lopsided grin and a wink seconds before they shut him in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Headcanon alert: colonial Mandarin, especially that coming out of L5, is different enough from Earth dialects that it would not be easily recognizable to anyone who not born on an orbital colony  
> [2] As before, Duo’s using the [International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet#Letters), to refer to Plan “H” or “I”


	7. Second Contact

The waiting was the worst, Quatre concluded. Their fate and rescue nearly sealed with Duo’s departure, they had little more to do than the all-important objective of surviving the coming hours. 

Wufei had – with Heero’s emphatic urging – retreated to medical to take a round in the cot and catch up on much needed sleep. Trowa had taken up both his pulse rifle and Quinn’s old handgun and took to walking the corridor. Meanwhile, Quatre and the others had returned to the operations center proper and sorted through the compound’s records. With the communications network down, he, Yosefi, and Heero had downloaded as much data as could be saved on a few antiquated flash drives Heero had had secured to his vest like bullets. As he watched the data stream to the device from his monitor, Quatre wondered idly if there had been some sentimental reason Heero had kept such old technology on his person. He glanced over at the other man, who was focused only at the task at hand. 

Before long, however, Quatre felt the pull of sleep tugging at the backs of his eyes. Leaning back against the desk chair, he scrubbed at his eyes with his knuckles and yawned. 

“You should get some sleep too,” came the gentle suggestion from Yosefi, a few terminals away. Heero glanced up briefly, but then returned to his data compiling. 

“I don’t know if that’s wise,” Quatre countered, choosing his words intentionally. He straightened in the chair and went back to his own data transfers.

“Look, Quatre. Regardless of what you may think of me right now, you are exhausted. Just like everyone else – but we’ve all taken rounds in med lab. I don’t believe I’ve seen you sleep this entire time,” Yosefi responded.

“He’s right, you know,” Heero added, joining the conversation. “You’re no good to anyone half-asleep. Go rest. We’ll be fine.”

“Alright, alright…” Quatre acquiesced, pushing away from the monitor to stand and stretch his arms overhead. “I’ll go keep Wufei company,” he added over his shoulder as he walked out of the room, toward medical.

But when he entered the med lab, he found the cot vacant, a pulse rifle resting abandoned on top. He thought at first he’d missed Wufei in the corridor, but then gave the bed a second look. The sheets had been pulled to the side, blocking the view of the space underneath.

Quatre walked to the cot and knelt on the floor beside it, pulling away the sheets. “What are you doing under there?” he asked.

“I was sleeping,” Wufei answered, his tone even. “Too exposed up top. Felt better down here. Not a fan of my bunkmates,” he added, gesturing generally toward the tubes that held the parasitic specimens which – Quatre was beginning to suspect – had started this whole thing.

Glancing up and behind him, he hesitated only a moment before asking, “Mind if I join you?”

Wufei laughed darkly at that. “The great Quatre Winner wants to join me in sleeping on the floor of some abandoned space colony. What would people say?”

“I don’t really give a shit what they say at this point.”

Wufei continued to chuckle. Quatre watched him, and couldn’t shake the feeling that he was observing a rare instance in which the other man was tipping over the precipice of fatigue and delirium. “Alright,” Wufei answered at last. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

With a relieved smile, Quatre reset the sheet to obscure the view from the door and walked around to the other side of the cot, sliding underneath as Wufei shifted to the side to make room for him. “I certainly hope Duo’s not the jealous type,” he said as curled up next to the other man, sleep already creeping up on the edges of his vision.

Wufei snorted. “Hardly,” he assured. “He ever got wind of this, he’d buy me some stupid stuffed animal to ‘keep me company’ while he’s away. Asshole.”

“Perhaps,” Quatre murmured through a wide yawn. “But at least he’s yours.”

There was a long pause and Quatre assumed Wufei had already fallen back to sleep until the other man whispered, “True.” With the admission darkness took him completely.

*****

“Quatre. Quatre wake up.”

The whispered words were urgent, pulling him from sleep with not-so-gentle emphasis from an elbow jabbing repeatedly into his belly. “What is it?” he asked Wufei, scrubbing at his eyes.

“They’re out.”

“Who’s out?”

“ _They_ are,” the man repeated, jabbing his fingers ahead of them. 

Craning his neck to follow Wufei’s line of sight, Quatre saw an empty canister rolling lazily back and forth on med lab’s floor. It was not unlike the tubes that held the parasitic samples elsewhere in the lab.

_Wait…_

Stifling a gasp, Quatre looked to Wufei, who held a finger up to his lips to urge quiet before sliding just out from under the cot to crane his torso up and out. With a muted curse, Wufei slid back under the cot and rolled onto his belly. In the small space, Quatre mirrored him. “My rifle’s gone,” Wufei informed him. 

They shared a moment of grim silence with a glance before they each slid out from under the cot on their bellies, kneeling on opposite sides of the pallet. Their eyes scanned their surroundings as they slowly got to their feet and moved closer together. 

Quatre’s eyes darted from one shadow to another. He could hear them, they both could, he knew. Scrambling about unseen amongst the med lab’s nooks and crannies. Perfect location for a sneak attack – they just had to wait till their prey was exposed.

Without a word, the two of them bolted to the doors and tried to open them. When they were met with resistance, Quatre glanced at the control panel to find it’d been torn to pieces. Someone had wanted them in there, someone had wanted them trapped. He cursed and pressed his back against the door, scanning their surroundings again. More skittering, more sounds of something closing in.

“Can we break the glass?” he asked. Wufei seemed to have the same thought as he hefted a chair and – without concern about the impending racket – hurdled the item at the glass panel that lined the med lab’s wall. The chair bounced off and clattered to the floor. Wufei cursed under his breath and looked around the room, seeking out another, heavier projectile.

Quatre looked about the room, gears turning in his head. He ran through his memory of their first entry to the lab – there had been something…yes! A lighter. Where…? He left the sealed door and parted Wufei’s side for a moment, crossing to the CMO’s desk, hoping Duo hadn’t moved it when he had been doing his research.

Sure enough, it stood abandoned as it had been when they’d first arrived, next to a dirty coffee cup and a stack of medical charts. He grabbed it and backed up against Wufei once more, centering the two of them under the overhead fire alarm. He climbed up onto the desk nearby and – with Wufei’s support from below – stretched out an arm to hold the lighter’s flame under the detector.

In an instant, the sprinkler system engaged and the emergency lights blinked to life. Dropping down from the desk once more, he and Wufei pressed their backs together to watch the room. 

“You honestly think this will work?” 

“I certainly hope so.”

No sooner had he uttered the words than something threw itself at him. His hands flew up to shield his face without a second thought and he pushed against the thing that pressed against his hands. The thing fell away and Quatre – in shock – watched as it seemed to regroup and make for the shelving units. _Higher vantage point_ , he realized. 

“To your left!” Wufei hissed and Quatre turned to see the thin legs of the second creature making its way up over the other side of one of the physician’s tables. 

Gritting his teeth, the first assailant forgotten, Quatre lunged against the table and pinned the creature to the wall. He held it fast, hoping that with enough force perhaps he could cleave it in two. 

But then, there was a cry from the man behind him and he looked over his shoulder to watch the other parasite wrap its tail around Wufei’s neck, the other man’s hands trying to push the thing away from his face. He stumbled backwards and fell to the floor, struggling.

“Wufei!” Quatre called out. Distracted, the pressure eased on the table and the parasite before him slipped a few inches closer, its legs stretching out, reaching for his wrists where he held the table fast. 

A pit opened up in his stomach and he knew with terminal certainty that this would not end well. If he moved away from the table, the parasite before him would be free once more. But if he didn’t…if he didn’t… “Wufei!” he called out again to the other man—

Bullets ripped through the reinforced glass that lined the wall between them, spreading spider web fractures seconds before Trowa and Heero leaped through. The pane shattered with the force of the impact, the fragments littering the med lab’s floor and crunching underneath their boots. They split apart, Trowa darting to Quatre while Heero ran to Wufei’s aid. 

“Look out,” Trowa ordered as he came up beside him. He braced his boot against the table’s edge and trained the rifle on the thing at the other side that struggled to free its long tail. Grabbing Quatre by his elbow, Trowa quickly moved him away as he pulled the rifle’s trigger, letting off a controlled burst of gunfire. The bullets tore the thing apart as its spindly legs danced on the tabletop, its blood already leaving smoking holes in the wall and furniture alike. 

Kill confirmed, they both bolted to the other side of the room, where Heero was struggling to keep the parasite from locking its legs around Wufei’s head. Quatre slid to his knees on the opposite side of the man’s struggling body and worked his fingers between the parasite’s tail and Wufei’s neck. He registered vaguely Heero turning his full attention to pulling the creature’s body away from the other man’s face while some grotesque tentacle of a thing reached out in vain.

Curling his fingers around the coiled length of the thing’s tail, Quatre felt the muscles contract in a last bid to capture its prey. The preternatural strength that resided in such a small thing reminded him of a python and he knew – as Wufei lay gasping between them, slowly suffocating – that if they couldn’t pry it loose, the thing could well break his neck.

But then, spring-like, it released with bruising force. He and Heero pulled the parasite away – its tail flailing in Quatre’s hands, searching for another victim – as Wufei fell back to the floor coughing. Trowa took position behind them and raised his rifle once more, ordering, “Over there.”

“Ready?” Heero asked him. 

“Go!”

Quatre and Heero launched the creature into air and across the room. Before it even struck the ground, Trowa fired, far heavier on the trigger this time, the bullets once more shredding the creature into small pieces. 

Turning his attention to Wufei, Quatre helped prop the man up against Heero’s torso. His breathing was coming in painful gasps, whistling through his damaged trachea. His neck was starting to swell, bruising already apparent and circling his throat. Quatre raised his eyes to meet Wufei’s and found them wide and lucid. In a painful, rasping whisper, he asked him, “Where’s your partner?”

*****

“You know,” Trowa said, as he watched Heero secure Yosefi to a desk chair with a pair of belts, “I’m beginning to really not like you.”

“This is ridiculous,” Yosefi scoffed. The gun that Barton had trained on him kept him from struggling too hard against his restraints. 

“But why you two?” Heero asked as he straightened and stepped aside, his hands going to the rifle that was still slung over his shoulder.

“Convenience maybe,” Quatre suggested, his arms crossed over his chest. “But I don’t think so – I’m his partner, and Wufei is the senior ranked agent on this case. He knew you all wouldn’t leave either of us to die here, and banked on the likelihood that you’d try to find a way to save us rather than shoot us on the spot.

“I would wager his plan was to play on your empathy in a crisis, suggest that when the drop ship arrived and transported us back to the _EGERIA_ that we be put in stasis. That way, when we arrived back in Earth orbit, he’d have two nicely packaged science experiments.” Yosefi said nothing, only shaking his head, incredulous.

“There’s no way we would’ve let them take you,” Heero said, his eyes drifting from their captive to Wufei and Quatre.

“A lot can go wrong in space travel,” Quatre answered. “Horrible accidents. Stasis chambers malfunctioning, slowly killing people in their sleep.” He looked up at Trowa and Heero and reasoned, “I don’t think either of you were supposed to make it back at all.”

“That is obscene,” Yosefi hissed, now red in the face. “How dare you.”

“You were the only one that didn’t come running when the alarms went off,” Trowa noted. “Maybe because you knew what we’d find.”

“That’s circumstantial at best, and you know it.”

“Perhaps. But I saw those tanks,” Heero told him. “We all did. There’s no way those things got out on their own. Someone would have had to release them…and who among those here actually has the motivation to do that?”

“Let me make one thing very clear, Dr. Yosefi,” Trowa hissed as he towered over the other man. “The only reason we’ve kept you alive thus far – especially after that little revelation Duo unearthed in the med lab – is because it would reflect poorly on us if you didn’t make it back. And we’re all about due process at Preventers.” He smiled darkly then, the barrel of his gun pressed against the other man’s cheekbone. “But I’ve got half a mind to remedy that through brute force.”

“This is crazy,” Yosefi sputtered, now sounding not entirely convinced of his own innocence. His eyes were wide and staring, bouncing from one man to another.

Quatre’s gaze slid to Wufei and collectively, they waited in heavy silence. His eyes drifted then to the other man’s throat. Rings of angry purple branded Wufei’s tan skin, circling his throat several times over. That thing in the lab could have killed him. It _would have_ killed him, Quatre knew, thinking of the colonists they’d seen cocooned along the walls in the atmosphere generator. It would have killed him, just not right away. Quatre shuddered.

At last, Wufei turned to Trowa and said only, his voice hoarse and rasping, “Ghost him,” before turning his back and walking away.

Quatre winced at the final judgment, Yosefi’s pleas falling on deaf ears. “Wait, wait—” Quatre said, stepping forward and reaching for Trowa’s gun…

But before he could say more, the lights went out. Darkness absorbed them fully, a complete and utter void that descended on the band of men. No one moved, their breath suddenly caught in their throats, until the emergency lighting flickered to life, red and angry.

“They cut the power,” Heero muttered.

“What do you mean ‘they?’” Trowa asked him, hackles raised.

“Could this be part of the meltdown?” Wufei asked, his eyes falling on Quatre.

He shook his head. “If anything, it would’ve surged beforehand.” 

“Duo said they could open doors,” Wufei told them, “but I assumed the intricacies of a colonial electric grid would’ve been beyond them.”

“You know what happens when you assume...”

“I don’t want to hear it, Yuy.”

“Let me go! Please, please untie me,” Yosefi begged from where he struggled, still bound to the chair. 

Quatre took pity on the man and undid the belt straps that held him fast while the others raced to their weapons – Heero crossing to the ops center door to seal it with the welding torch that had not left his side. Grabbing a fistful of Yosefi’s shirt, Quatre hauled him to his feet and snarled, “We’ll deal with you later,” before shoving him aside. Wufei tossed a rifle to Quatre and reluctantly did the same for the other man, necessity outweighing judgment for a brief time. 

Behind the heavy door, they could hear the sentries on either end of the corridor roaring to life. “At least we know they’re working,” Trowa noted. 

“Heero, do we have a reading?” Wufei asked over the dull racket outside, his eyes still trained on the ops center’s door. 

The other man glanced down at the motion tracker mounted to his hip and hesitated only a moment before saying, “Massive signal. Twenty meters and counting.”

“How many rounds do those sentry guns have?” Yosefi asked 

“Not enough,” Heero answered. “Seventeen meters,” he added, removing the safety on his weapon without raising his eyes from the motion tracker.

“They’re closing in, even with the guns,” Quatre muttered more to himself than the others. “How is that even possible...?”

“Hell if I know. Twelve meters.”

“That can’t be right – that’s at the door,” Yosefi said, his voice shaking.

“We missed something,” Quatre hissed.

“Impossible.”

“More likely ‘highly improbable,’ technically,” Trowa countered, training his weapon on the door before them.

“We’ll argue semantics later, Barton.”

“What did we miss?” Quatre murmured again, ignoring the others’ angry banter. Outside the sentry guns continued their assault unabated as the motion tracker pinged. 

“I think Quatre’s right – we missed something,” Heero said, lifting his eyes at last from the motion tracker. “We’re now at four meters.”

“Now _that_ is impossible,” Trowa said. “That’s inside the room.”

Quatre felt the gears turning in his head again. Something not reflected in the plans, something not in the corridors themselves. Glancing back at Heero, their eyes met. Heero’s gaze turned to the ceiling, and Quatre’s eyes followed his. _Oh, fuck me…_

“Quatre,” Heero began, his voice even, “are these drop ceilings by chance?”

Wufei inhaled sharply while Trowa cursed beside him. “I don’t think I have ever been so happy to have armor-piercing rounds,” Wufei groaned, turning his rifle to the ceiling. “Short burst. Fire!”

They did exactly that, letting loose a controlled barrage of gunfire that rang in their ears. In the pause that followed, they watched as the holes left by the bullets hissed and grew. And then the ceiling groaned, as if under tremendous weight.

“Oh, no,” Quatre whispered as through the metal paneling fell a mountain of hissing, spitting creatures, greasy shadows in the red emergency lighting. Without commands they fired into the fray as the monsters darted up against the walls, bounding behind computer terminals as they split apart from their fallen cohort. 

And more kept coming from the holes in the ceiling. Quatre continued to keep his aim leveled at the growing mob on the ground, even as one of the others continued to fire at those dropping from the ceiling. He vaguely registered Yosefi cowering in the corner behind them, his weapon slung across his chest and forgotten. 

“We can’t stay here,” he shouted over the din to Wufei. 

“I agree!” the other man shouted back, picking off one monster which bounded over the pile of its comrades and into the air before them. “Heero! Find us a way out of here!”

With a few parting shots, Heero turned from the fight and retreated to the wall where Yosefi had curled himself into a ball.

“What do we do?” Yosefi sputtered. “Where do we go?”

With terrifying force, Quatre watched Heero tuck his fingertips through the grating of a ventilation shaft and – bracing a foot against the wall – tore the metal from its moorings, the panel clattering to the floor at their feet. “Into the air ducts,” he ordered, lifting his rifle again to fire into the oncoming horde. 

Sensing his opportunity to escape, Yosefi dove into the duct, scrambling along the slick metal and into the darkness. “Dammit, Yosefi!” Quatre cursed after his business partner. Ducking to the back he called after the man again, to no avail. 

“Leave him,” Heero told him, pushing him in by the shoulder. 

“He has no idea where he’s going,” Quatre reasoned.

“Neither do I,” Heero shot back. “That’s why you’re going first. Get _in_ Quatre.”

Quatre slung his rifle over his shoulder and crawled forward. Behind him, he registered the others following – the gunfire dying out one-by-one, their departure punctuated by several heavy explosions which Quatre could only assume were grenades. 

Crouching in the oversized ducts, he moved awkwardly, doubled over, and prayed he remembered the layout of the compound’s infrastructure well-enough to find their way back to the complex’s main courtyard and out into Europa’s cold night. 

Right then left, then right again.

As they turned a corner, Quatre spied Yosefi at the distant end of the shaft. The other man looked up at the sound of their approach and struggled to bring up his weapon. Heero dove on top of him from behind as Quatre too late realized the other man’s intent, calling for the others to do the same as bullets ricocheted in the metal around them.

Yosefi’s attack was short-lived, however. There was a sudden scream and a crash. Quatre looked up to watch a behemoth pounce down on top of the other man from the open shaft over his head, making quick work of Yosefi.

…and blocking their escape. 

“Fuck,” Heero cursed next to him and swung about his own rifle to fire at the creature at the other end, catching it in the chest as it reared back, filling the air duct entirely.

“Alright,” Quatre sighed, “so not that way…” Pivoting, he took them left and then right, resituating the compound’s map in his head.

They were going deeper into the complex. Not out. _They’re herding us_ , Quatre realized. 

As he bolted past a junction he caught a flash of oily black in the shadows and too late registered what it would mean. A frantic cry and gunfire reverberated like cannons in the air duct as Trowa fought back the growing wave behind them. “Move faster!” the shout came from the rear. Quatre picked up the pace and veered the right and then left again.

But then the ducts underfoot wrenched to the right, tilting. Heero cursed beside him and grabbed his arm, hauling him past the next junction. Wufei and Trowa weren’t so lucky. Quatre turned to look over his shoulder and watched the two of them fall through one of the duct grates and down one of the air shafts to unknown ends. 

*****

The force of their impact knocked the grating from the ventilation shaft they had plummeted down, and deposited them both on the floor several feet below, a tangled mass of limbs. Recovering, Wufei groaned while Trowa hastily pushed himself up off the other man and shifted his weight back to sit on his heels. “You okay?” he asked.

“I am,” Wufei told him between gritted teeth. “My knee is another matter.” 

Turning his attention to the joint in question, Trowa winced at the sight. There was blood on the torn fatigues. “Broken?” he asked.

“Probably.”

“Can you stand?”

Wufei responded with a bitter laugh. “Let’s find out,” he said, offering one hand to Trowa, while he pushed himself up off the ground with the other. Between the two of them, they were able to right him, but it became quite apparent that he wasn’t going anywhere fast. With some difficulty, they moved to the wall, where Wufei leaned heavily against some torn paneling. 

_Well, shit…_

Trowa kept his assessment to himself, however, knowing Wufei would have drawn a similar conclusion. Instead, he looked up and down the corridor, trying to determine where they had ended up in the maze of the colonial compound. He guessed they must have fallen several floors, based on their impact alone. The lights were off in this quadrant. He recounted the complex’s schematics that they had pored over so often in their short stay on Europa, and tried to determine the fastest route back to the main courtyard…

Just then, there came the familiar pounding of boots overhead. “Trowa!” came the call. “Wufei!”

Maybe their luck hadn’t quite yet run out, and Trowa felt his face split with a smile of sheer disbelief. “Hey! Hey!” Trowa called, climbing up on the piping that ran the length of the wall and sticking his fingers up through the floor grating above. He heard and felt Quatre and Heero bound over before they came into focus, Quatre’s hand closing over his digits.

“Are you okay?” he asked him. “Is Wufei with you?”

“Yes, I’m here too,” the other man answered at the sound of his name.

Trowa added, “His leg’s busted.”

“We’re going to have to cut through,” Heero informed them after a perfunctory searching around the premises, withdrawing one of the small welding torches he had strapped to his belt before their sudden departure from the operations center. “Get down off of whatever ledge you’re on so I don’t hit you with the torch.”

Trowa nodded and Quatre released his fingers, allowing him to drop the rest of the way to the floor. Overhead, there was a pop and a hiss as the welding torch sprung to life and began to slice through the steel grating separating the four of them. He walked to Wufei and knelt down beside him. For the first time during this horrific ordeal, he allowed himself to be exhausted. Almost there. Almost.

His attention was pulled by a tired laugh from the other man. “You look like I feel, Barton,” Wufei told him, his own face betraying his own fatigue. 

_Ping._

The sound came to them as clear as a gunshot. Looking up through the grating at the two men above them, he saw Quatre’s silhouette pick up the motion tracker and pivot back and forth. “Heero…” he warned.

“I know...”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Trowa admired Yuy’s composure as he continued to cut through the grating, unperturbed by the tell-tale sound of inbound company.

Wufei pushed himself up off the wall and testing his knee. He winced against the pain and Trowa stood to join him, wrapping a supportive arm around his waist. The two of them looked up and down the hall, searching for signs of movement, shadows of encroaching death.

 ** _Ping._** The hits came more frequently, insistent. But from where? On which level? Trowa knew he and Wufei were in no place to assist if the worst were to happen. 

But then, they weren’t really in a position to run either. Trowa drew the hand gun he’d inherited from Quinn and released the safety as he pulled Wufei tighter against his side. 

“I don’t think a 9mm is going to cut it, Barton,” Wufei told him, ever helpful.

“Yeah, well...let’s see you do better,” he told him. 

_Behind!_ Trowa spun – Wufei in tow – on their attackers which had rounded the corner with terrifying speed, bounding at them with almost mammalian grace. He raised the pistol and fired, again and again. One hit, two…green blood already corroding the floor panels underfoot before their grotesque bodies collapsed to the ground.

But there were too many, and they were too fast. The creatures fell upon them, separating them from one another as they too fell under the crushing weight of the swarm. Trowa reached out to the side, searching desperately for his comrade, finding only open air and cold metal. 

And then the tide was carrying him away, deeper and deeper into the secret arteries of the colonial complex. Back to the hive, back to the walls of bodies where he knew they’d mount him like all the others. He cried out against it, his arms searching for something to hold, to stay the flow, but without avail. Too late, too late…

*****

The shots below them rang of desperation, a last-ditch effort to fight off the inevitable. Heero reared back from the grating and he and Quatre together stomped through the weakened floor, the metal groaning under their combined force, until it wrenched to the side to reveal…nothing.

They were gone, and the silence left in their wake was deafening.

Quatre shouted down into the empty corridor below after their missing comrades, cursing in vibrant colors while the motion tracker abandoned on the floor beside them resumed its incessant chirping. Dragging himself to his feet, Heero fisted the back of Quatre shirt and pushed him, stumbling, toward the elevator at the other end of the hall. “Go!” he shouted, chasing after the other man. “We can’t help them if we’re dead.”

They bounded down the corridor, their boots striking the metal underfoot with ringing clarity, the motion detector’s warning signal growing ever more insistent, until at last they skidded to a stop inside the waiting elevator. Heero aimed the pulse rifle out at the empty corridor in anticipation while Quatre slammed his hand open-palmed against the elevator’s buttons. 

Just as the doors were closing, he saw it. And it saw him. The creature lunged at them, its long claws braced against the elevator doors, holding them apart as its black head stretching out at them, teeth bared and glistening. 

One of them cursed, Heero couldn’t tell who, as they were both thrown backwards at the attack, their backs pressed up against the cold metal of the elevator’s walls. The creature hissed at them, stretching a long arm forward in an effort to reach them, its size alone seeming to deter it coming any closer. 

It wasn’t alone, it was just the first – Heero was sure of it, remembering the signal that he had caught on the motion tracker’s screen. With gritted teeth and fire burning in his belly, Heero took aim and fired.

The creature fell back with a final screech and the elevator doors slid shut in its sudden absence. He vaguely registered Quatre beside him, unfastening the chest plate he had lived in since they arrived and tossing the thing to the other side of the elevator. It hissed and spat where it landed, and only then did Heero register the smell…and pain. He groaned and leaned heavily backwards into Quatre’s waiting arms, closing his eyes against the smoke that rose up from his chest. _Stupid_ , he thought. _You knew better._

Quatre was beside him then, pulling Heero’s arm over his shoulder while the other arm wrapped around his back to support him. He winced against the flare of agony that arced through his torso and realized he’d lost feeling in half his face. _Moving now_ , he reminded himself as the elevator doors slid aside, and Quatre half-dragged him with words of encouragement on toward the distant satlink. _Need to get to the drop ship, then get the others._

*****

Duo glanced over his shoulder only briefly as Quatre and Heero came up over the hill before turning his attention fully back to the drop ship, which he settled carefully over the uneven terrain. “We shouldn’t stay long,” he shouted over the roar at the men who paused at his side while the ship completed its landing sequence and the hatch opened.

“We’re not leaving,” Quatre informed him as he pushed forward, Heero stumbling beside him.

“Wait, what?” Duo queried, looking up from the console, his eyes darting around them. Realization struck suddenly as he watched the two men make their way up the gangplank into the ship. “Where are the others?” When Quatre didn’t respond, he followed him in, careful to shut the hatch securely behind him.

Inside, Quatre settled Heero down in the drop ship’s small interior seating compartment, strapping him in as he faded in and out of consciousness. He could hear Duo come up behind him.

“Quat?” The word sounded stale, fearful. Fully out of place coming from the other man’s mouth.

“We got separated,” Quatre explained, standing and walking away from Heero and towards the ship’s small armory. Duo followed. “We got separated in the air ducts – they were chasing us, splitting us apart, I’m sure of it. When we got out, there was a floor between us.” He hesitated then. In the silence he pulled two guns from their mountings on the wall. Setting them down, he said, “They took them.”

“I’m going with you.”

His back on the other man, Quatre smirked. Volunteered without the slightest hesitation – old habits die hard, apparently. “No,” Quatre told him, firmly, turning to face him. “I’ll go. I need you here.”

“But—”

“Heero is in no shape to pilot this ship,” Quatre reminded him. “He needs you,” he added, and watched, Duo’s gaze turn inward. Withdrawing, running…

“Hey,” Quatre said, trying to break the other man away from his thoughts. Snapping his fingers by Duo’s eyes, he tried again, “Hey!” It seemed to work, and Duo physically shook himself, his eyes refocusing on the other man. Quatre reached out and took hold of Duo’s arms at the bicep, holding them with what he hoped was reassuring pressure. “I will bring them back,” he said, with absolute certainty. 

Duo nodded and bit his lip, unable to hold his gaze too long. As Quatre turned back to unlatch a supply cabinet and withdrew a roll of duct tape, Duo turned to another and pulled out what looked like a palm-sized data tablet. “Here,” he said, passing it to Quatre. “It’s one of our homing devices. You’ll need it if you’re going alone.”

Quatre took the device and flipped it around between his fingers. “How does it work?”

“The fatigues are all bioware,” Duo told him. “It’s how we track life readings from the APC console.” Quatre remembered the screens that Quinn had monitored so closely during their initial foray. He hadn’t thought about how the data was being transferred. “One of the readings the suit puts off is a generalized location. It won’t give you exact coordinates, but it’ll at least tell you if you’re closing the distance. So long as the others are still clothed, as one would assume, then you should be able to find them.”

Quatre nodded and tucked the device into a pocket, thanking the other man before turning back to the weapons on the counter. 

Leaving Quatre to his devices, Duo turned and retreated back up to where Heero sat. “What happened, man?” he asked, kneeling down next to his damaged comrade. Heero needed medical attention, the burns on his chest and face looking particularly angry.

Heero’s head lulled to the side, as if he was trying to shake it without much success. “Stupid.”

“What did you do?”

“We made it to the elevator,” he began, dredging his flagging energy up to explain. “But one of those things followed us, tried to get in. Was angry…real angry. So I shot it.” He winced, before adding, “Too close…”

Standing, Duo crossed to another storage hatch and withdrew a medical kit. Rifling through its contents, he found a single-use syringe of morphine. He held the package between his teeth and withdrew a small bottle of antiseptic and cotton swabs. Turning back to the other man, he took a seat next to Heero on the floor of the ship and quickly cleaned the other man’s arm. He tossed both the bottle and swaps away once there was a clean enough spot of skin and pealed open the syringe’s packaging. “Don’t worry, Heero. We got you – I’ll patch you up. But first,” he said, taking hold of the man’s arm and sliding the needle into Heero’s bicep. 

*****

“This is an emergency announcement for all personnel,” a woman announced over the speakers throughout the complex as Quatre walked away from the drop ship which rested precariously on the atmosphere engine’s helo pad. The pulse rifle slung over his back was a familiar weight, and offered some counterbalance to the sister rifle and flamethrower he had bound together on the way here. “There remains. Fifty. Minutes. To conclude mandatory evacuation of this site…”

The announcement only steeled his nerves and he struck the service elevator’s button for the subterranean levels with brutal force. As the gates slid shut, separating him for perhaps the last time from the drop ship and safety, Quatre let his head fall back against the elevator’s wall and closed his eyes. This was madness, every fiber of his being told him so. Which was precisely why he was going in – they were here because of him, and he’d be damned if he didn’t get them out of it.

Releasing the breath he’d been holding with one explosive exhale, he switched off the pulse rifle’s safety and lit the gas torch for the flamethrower. He braced for impact as the elevator chimed and he stepped forward into the abyss.

He was met with no resistance. 

As he descended deeper into the hive, the silence set warning bells off in his mind which mirrored the sirens signaling the engine’s impending demise. As he rounded corners and crossed junctions, he spat fire into the darkness and dropped flares in his wake, occasionally glancing down to check the homing device in his palm to ensure the distance between signals continued to decrease. 

It was at one such juncture that a hoarse whisper called out to him in the darkness.

“Quat!” Quatre stared into the darkness of one of the antechambers off of the main corridor and registered movement. Restrained and subtle, the whisper came again, “Quatre!”

Pivoting, he prepped the flamethrower and fired it into the room, the orange jet of tongue breathing light into the room. Against the wall near the far corner, he saw Trowa turn his head away from the flame’s sudden heat, but he saw nothing else – nothing besides the two of them and the dead, their chests gaping holes which pock-marked the walls.

Quatre sprinted forward and skidded to a halt in front of the other man, letting the weapons hang from the straps that crisscrossed his chest as he reached up and began pulling Trowa free from the wall. The black, resin-like substance came apart in plates the slime that coated it greasing his hands. 

“Where’s Wufei?” Quatre hissed. 

“I don’t know,” Trowa whispered back. “We were separated. They came on us like a tidal wave.” Removing the last of the resin that had held him to the wall like plaster, Trowa fell forward into the other man who stumbled only a moment before regaining his balance.

“Can you walk?” Quatre asked.

“Yes,” Trowa assured, straightening to prove as much. Quatre saw the wince of pain it induced, but silently agreed not to acknowledge it aloud.

“We need to move,” Quatre said, once Trowa was safely on his own two feet. Unslinging the rifle that was thrown over his back, he handed the weapon to the other man. 

“Not without Wufei.”

“Definitely not without Wufei,” Quatre agreed, glancing down at the homing device in his palm. Looking up, and hefting the duct taped contraption up at the ready once again, he waved Trowa forward, deeper into the hive. “This way.”

They descended further into the depths and still, no contact. Quatre struck another flare and they turned a corner, confident they were closing in on Wufei’s signal despite the interference from the atmosphere engine itself. 

Again, there was movement. Closer to the floor this time, it came from a room laden heavily down with what looked like…eggs. They were massive, grotesquely soft and almost translucent as they passed, lit by the warning lights overhead and the flamethrower below. Some were open and vacant, he noted as they passed, others…less so.

“Don’t touch anything,” Quatre whispered and heard Trowa scoff behind him. Again, here was movement and a flash of eyes in the dim light. “Wufei,” Quatre whispered to the man pinned to the wall. 

Whether it was the sound, or the motion, he couldn’t be sure. But something amongst the three of them triggered the egg closest to Wufei to shudder, the fleshy lips at its apex unfolding slowly. Quatre watched in horror as skeletal fingers stretch up and out at the edges, testing their new boundaries and the promise they held. He grit his teeth and strode forward, firing two quick shots into the egg itself. Bounding over, he shot it again for good measure. Confident the thing inside was dead, he slung his weapons and knelt before Wufei. 

“How is he?” Trowa asked as he came up behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, Quatre saw the other had taken up a sentry position, blocking access to them and training his gun on the shadows.

“He’s in shock, I think,” Quatre told him giving Wufei a once over. The man was bleeding from his head in addition to the leg which was propped at a painfully incorrect angle. “Wufei, can you hear me?” 

The other man blinked up at him and though his eyes wouldn’t focus, he replied with a rasping, “Quat?”

Winner smiled and took the other man’s face in in his hands as he assured, “We’re going to get you out of here.” Releasing him, he made quick work of the resin that held the other man to the ground, snapping it at the thin points and tossing it aside. Over his shoulder, he told Trowa, “You’re going to need to carry him I think.”

“I’ll manage,” Trowa assured, turning from his post so they could switch places. 

“Think you’ll be able to do some running? Running might be a good thing,” Quatre muttered. “They probably heard those shots, wherever they are…”

“Right,” Trowa acknowledged. Quatre switched the safety off of his rifle and fired up the flamethrower again, keeping his eyes trained on the dark corners, watching for wayward movement while he listened to Trowa coax Wufei up onto his back. A moment passed and Trowa told him, “Alright. Let’s go.” 

With Trowa and Wufei staying close behind him, they moved as a unit through the complex, the loudspeakers overhead spouting muffled warnings that their available time for evacuation was dwindling rapidly. 

As they backtracked through the hive, they found their path blocked by burst pipes spewing overheated gas and collapsed stairways. And on the periphery, shadows. _Why are they keeping their distance?_ Quatre asked himself, feeling his guts twist and fighting the heady feeling of déjà vu. _They’re herding us, just like before_. He bolted down a darkened corridor in the hopes that they could throw off the shadows that followed but drew up short, Trowa cursing behind him at the sight that unfolded before them. 

She sat enthroned in the center of the antechamber, deceptively docile and surrounded by her unborn children. Rows upon rows of eggs encircled her and as she raised her massive head, and Quatre knew she had been waiting for them.

“Get behind me,” Quatre whispered, and felt Trowa move away from the behemoth before them, putting Quatre squarely in between. He stepped forward and watched the monstrous creature’s crested head turn one way and then another as its hood slid back to reveal a nasty set of teeth, which struck him as somehow more vicious than the smaller ones they’d already encountered. Curious, he realized. It was curious. But not threatened. 

Not yet.

Flicking the trigger for the flamethrower, he blasted the flame into the darkness. The dark queen reeled, spitting and hissing at the sudden light and heat that spilled out from such a small thing. He took his finger off the trigger and angled it down to the floor, to the eggs that surrounded them. “You’re going to let us go,” he hissed with a fledgling hope that she understood the most basic message. “These two are mine.”

Silence stretched out between them until at last she looked to her right and let out a long, low hiss. Glancing to the side, he watched the shadows that lurked there withdraw and disappear into the darkness from which they’d come.

“Go,” Quatre whispered to the men behind him. Trowa needed no further urging as he picked his way through the rows of eggs, careful to not disturb their slumber. Quatre backed out after him, one eye trained on the queen who watched him go, teeth bared.

They made just to the threshold when three of the pods opened around them. Quatre cursed under his breath and released hell with a pull of the trigger. Fire enveloped the chamber and the queen screamed at the betrayal from her throne. He shifted weapons and launched several grenades in his wake from the pulse rifle, the explosions echoing behind him as he turned and followed Trowa as the two of them fled, guns blazing.

Feet pounding the floor below them, heedless of the creatures in hot pursuit, they retraced Quatre’s steps back to the elevator bay several floors up. As Trowa and Quatre fired first one way and then the other, dropping black shapes as they sought to overtake them with sprays of bullets. _Don’t look back, don’t look back…_ The mantra bounced around in his head as they bolted for salvation. Up ahead, the elevator waited, open and ready for them. 

Trowa crossed the threshold first and deposited Wufei on the floor as he laid down waves of covering fire while Quatre darted inside with him, his boots slipping on the smooth metal underfoot. He slammed his hand insistently against the elevator buttons, grateful when the doors slid shut against the oncoming assault, the elevator ascending with a shudder that smacked suspiciously of a death rattle. The cavalry reached them too late, however, and as the queen rounded the corner, she screeched viciously as they were lifted up and away from her, her teeth gnashing up at their retreating forms. 

Quatre allowed himself a brief respite as they climbed the structure up to safety, his eyes drifting from Trowa to Wufei and back, the three of them sharing laughter tainted with exhaustion and no small amount of disbelief.

“Reckless,” Wufei muttered, the reprimand hollow as he squinted up at Quatre.

“I have my moments,” he answered with a devilish grin.

“Thank you,” the other man croaked. 

Quatre’s smile softened and he rested his hand on Wufei’s shoulder, hoping the touch served as some comfort, a reminder that they’d made it out, against all odds. They were going home.

As the elevator reached its apex, they regained their footing and Quatre helped Trowa resituate Wufei on his back. The doors slid aside with a helpful _ding_ and they burst onto the helo pad to find…it empty. Quatre’s stomach plummeted and as the atmosphere engine began to shake itself apart around them, he dropped his weapons to the ground and cursed. “God dammit, Duo Maxwell! Where the fuck did you—”

“There!” Trowa interrupted, gesturing to their right as a gray shape drifted in and out of the smoke and cloud cover. As the drop ship made its approach, another explosion rocked the platform, and they fell to their knees and Duo swung the ship to the side to avoid being struck by debris from the blast which plummeted several stories to the ground below. 

Trowa passed Wufei to Quatre, who took him easily enough in order to help Duo navigate in. As he stepped away, however, Quatre heard the elevator chime behind them. 

With dread building in his belly, Quatre turned to stare back at the darkness that greeted him. Out from the shadows she stepped, nightmare made reality. 

“Get in, you idiots!” 

The shout came from Trowa whose eyes darted back and forth between them and the monster that had joined them on the platform. With expert skill, Duo held the drop ship steady as Trowa leapt up onto the ramp that led into the main cabin before dragging Wufei up with him. Quatre climbed up on the helo pad’s safety railing and jumped aboard shortly after, shouting up at their pilot, “Go! Go!” as the hatch closed behind him. 

They took to the air as they struggled into seats, snapping harnesses across chests as Duo hit the ship’s accelerator, launching them up into Europa’s outer atmosphere with seconds to spare. The complex below glowing white as it wiped itself from the moon’s surface.


	8. Final Contact

As Duo docked them with _EGERIA_ , the drop ship was eerily quiet. Quatre spent the ride back from the Europa colony cleaning and dressing Wufei’s wounds while Trowa kept one eye on the unconscious Heero Yuy. Upon arrival, the lot of them shuffled about the drop ship, Duo ducking out from the cockpit into the main cabin while the hatch opened behind him. Trowa moved to unfasten the harness holding Heero in place until Duo touched his shoulder and shook his head. “Let’s move him with a stretcher,” the pilot suggested and Trowa nodded, the two of them following Wufei and Quatre out of the ship.

Down on the hangar floor, Wufei stood staring, glassy-eyed up at dark recesses of the drop ship. “Wufei?” Quatre prompted, concerned, as he took long strides to close the distance between them. “What is it?”

The other man turned to him as he approached and said only, “She hitched a ride with us.”

Following his line of sight, Quatre looked up with a gasp. Grabbing Wufei’s arm, he threw them both aside as a black scorpion-like tail launched itself at them from the shadows, its point gouging a hole in the metal floor below. Quatre scrambled to his feet as Duo came up beside him, helping Wufei up and backing away.

She extracted herself almost gingerly from the landing gear, unwinding from the cramped compartment to the ground below. As she straightened and brought herself to her full height, she towered over them. Had to be at least four – no, _five_ meters tall. _Impossible to kill_ , he thought. _Too fucking big._

She shook her massive head, the hood sliding back to reveal her menacing jawline, her arms spreading wide. To his left, the others took several steps backward, drawing her attention.

“Hey! Hey!” Quatre shouted up at the behemoth, waving his arms above his head until she turned and locked him in her sights once more. After a breathless pause, he shouted, “ _Run!_ ” and the four of them took off in different directions.

His feet pounded the metal floor below, the creature hot on his heels as he skidded into one of the mechanic storage units on the hangar’s perimeter, slamming his fist against the door panel as he did so. It slid shut behind him with a hiss, just as the creature ran into it, the collision rattling the door itself. Muffled, he could hear her roaring at the barricade between them, her massive head battering against the door.

_Think think think think…_

*****

“Why’s it after Quatre?” Duo asked, watching the monstrous creature ram its crested head again and again into the blast door that separated it from Winner.

“Maybe because he torched her place?” Wufei offered where he huddled against the stacks of crates in the back of the storage space. 

Duo turned and stared at him, and Wufei shrugged, his eyes unfocused. Stepping out across the threshold, Duo took a deep breath and bellowed, “Hey!” The creature turned and roared at him, baring monstrous teeth as it took long, assured strides toward him. “Oh shit,” he hissed as the thing’s pace picked up and he darted back across the threshold of the blast door, slamming his fist on the controls. 

As it reached them, it braced an arm against the door pausing its descent long enough to rake its claws underneath. Duo jumped back once more to join Wufei where the two of them cowered against boxes of supplies, just barely out of reach. 

The creature gave up and released the door, which slid and locked into place. It pressed its teeth against the glass viewing pane and exhaled a blast of hot air, agitated. With great effort, his eyes locked on the thing just outside, Duo pulled himself from the crates at his back and walked forward to the control panel, locking the door in place from the inside.

As he bounded back to Wufei, the thing outside shrieked at him, ramming its massive head against the door until she withdrew suddenly. Through the glass panel, he saw what she saw.

Heero Yuy, white bandages and all, standing stock still at the foot of the drop ship’s gang plank.

“Oh, Jesus…”

*****

“Motherfucker,” Trowa cursed as the creature whirled on Heero, who stared at it wide-eyed until some part of his brain switched on and he bolted, diving into an open floor panel in an effort to escape. 

It was a clever escape attempt; but it wouldn’t last, he knew, watching the thing close the distance and stalking the prey underfoot. One by one, she pulled up the hangar’s flooring panels, her arms swinging underneath in attempts to capture the other man. 

Unable to wait any longer for the inevitable, Trowa broke free of his own hiding place and sprinted into view. "Hey, you leave him alone, you bitch!” He spread his arms as wide as he could and bellowed, “Come pick on someone your own size!”

He hoped the diversion worked, but he didn’t have much time to consider Heero’s fate as he turned and ran, the creature’s footsteps gaining on him. He jumped and grasped the dangling chains of the drop ship pulleys and hauled himself up as quickly as humanly possible. Only after he’d reached the hook block and jib did he chance a glance down. 

The creature stalked below him, her gaze singularly focused on how get him back down. She spread her arms wide as if to welcome his fall, her teeth bared and hissing. 

Hooking his legs through the bars of the jib itself, Trowa hoisted himself up and held tight. “Now what?” he muttered to himself, and wondered how long he could keep her attention before she returned to Heero – who he assumed still huddled under the questionable safety of the floor panels – or Duo and Wufei who were only moderately safer behind a blast door.

Below him, the creature hissed and took hold of the chains he had climbed and _pulled_. To his left he heard the hook block whine and the jib itself leaned dangerously away from the wall on which it was mounted. 

Before he could scramble further from the edge however, the creature’s attention was drawn once more by movement elsewhere in the hangar.

*****

As the blast door opened, Quatre took a deep breath and exhales slowly. He moved the loader forward with long, steady steps and raised and spun the pincer claws before him. She would still tower over him, he knew. But at least now, he had a chance…to incapacitate, if not kill.

The creature left Trowa and walked straight passed the others’ hiding places, curious about this new addition. She hissed at him as she stalked back and forth in front of him, looking for an explanation and an opening for attack.

“Remember me?” Quatre asked her as he flicked his thumb across the loader’s control pad and switched on the machine’s welding torch, hitting the gas and allowing the flame burn an uncontrolled orange. The creature shrieked at the sight and lunged. 

Quatre threw one of the loaders arms across the front and caught her on the side of the head, back-handing her on the return as she straightened. The creature withdrew several steps, reassessing this newcomer, and bared her teeth once more in a feral grin that made his blood run cold. Hydraulics whined and hissed in the otherwise silent hangar around them. 

As she made another bid at the loader, he clamped one of the claws down on her neck and held her away from him, tightening the machine’s grip with relentless pressure as she shrieked and clawed at the suit. He pressed his head back against the loader’s headrest, hoping to avoid her claws.

But it was the tail he had forgotten about. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the black flash seconds before it connected with the loader mere centimeters from his head. It came again, and again, each time inching ever closer to perforating his skull. 

At last, with a cry, he raised the loader's other arm and snagged the tail near the speared end, lifting the creature off the floor and clamping the loader’s claws painfully down on the creature held immobile between them. It snarled and thrashed, straining the loader’s capacity. 

_Dear self_ , Quatre thought. _Whatever it was you planned on doing, better do it soon._

*****

Lifting the floor grate, Heero poked his head up from his hiding place and watched the loader’s claws tighten on the creature’s head and tail, stabilizing if not immobilizing the thing entirely. But Heero knew that it wouldn’t hold it – the loader could only absorb so much force; it wasn’t built for fist fights with hostile alien species. 

But maybe they could move it…

Heero jumped up out of the flooring and bolted to the airlock, sliding to the ground on his knees next to the remote panel. Flipping it over, he initiated the start sequence. Red lights flashed in the hangar as the interior doors began to slide apart.

*****

Quatre spied Heero’s sprint from his hiding place and moments later watched the warning lights go off around them. He strained his head away from the lunging teeth of his attacker and saw the other man at the airlock. 

To the monster trapped in the loader’s claws, he spat, “Let’s take a walk, shall we?”

Slowly…agonizingly slowly, he moved her into position over the abyss as the creature struggled. He wondered if she realized she was losing this fight, and then in the same breath decided he didn’t care. Releasing the claws’ hold, he dropped her.

Or at least, he meant to. With one final act of aggression, the creature grabbed the bars over his harness and pulled the loader down with her. They fell several stories, and landed with a heavy thud that vibrated through the walls around them.

“Quatre! Quatre get up!” 

Opening his eyes, he stared back up into the safety of the ship and Heero’s terrified face. He coughed and spat blood, his head swimming. All the while, he could feel her struggling beneath the weight of the loader, her claws tearing at the metal walls as she raged. 

In a daze, Quatre unfastened the harness holding him to the loader and scrambled off the wreckage to the thin ladder running the length of the tunnel. _One hand over the other_ , he told himself as he fought back the darkness that was invading his vision at the edges. He shook his head to dispel the shadows, without much success. 

Overhead, he saw Trowa appear at the edge of the airlock with Heero, his eyes going wide. “Climb faster, Quat. Come on,” he urged.

 _One hand over the other…_ He vaguely registered yellow warning lights coming on in the tunnel itself, and knew it meant Heero had activated the opening sequence. Quatre redoubled his focus on the rungs ahead of him, blocking out the shrieking below and the doors sliding shut from the opposite side. 

As soon as he was within reach, Trowa and Heero reached down and took hold of his arms, hauling him physically up the remaining distance. It was with moments to spare, he realized as the airlock slid into place behind him with a hydraulic hiss. 

Quatre felt the siren pull of sleep creeping up on him as he lay on his back in the hangar, the world ringing, his breath coming in heavy gasps. _Be sure, be absolutely sure_ , he thought then, pushing back the darkness one more time and rolling onto his belly to crawl out over the airlock doors and stare down through the observation window. Heero and Trowa joined him and they watched as the exterior door opened and the dark queen was sucked out into the void.

*****

Aboard the _EGERIA_ , they assembled for a final meeting of the minds which would decide their next steps. After the final horror, they had spent several days charting and re-charting the fastest, safest route back to commercial Earth space but had done little more than lick their wounds and damaged mental states. 

They had collectively decided to put Heero down into stasis for the ride back in an effort to stabilize his health and prevent infection to the burns he’d sustained. Meanwhile, Duo and Wufei had hardly left one another’s side; Trowa was always armed; and Quatre hadn’t slept since their arrival because every time he closed his eyes, he saw _her_ teeth.

Now, that was going to change. It had to if they were going to make it home. 

“O2 is in surplus, and we had enough food supplies packed for two months active for a full crew,” Trowa explained. “There’s only five of us left and if we leave Heero in the tube for the duration of the flight back, then we should be alright.”

“Barring any unforeseen crises,” Duo countered.

Trowa nodded, acquiescing, “Barring any unforeseen crises.”

“Is there any reason why we wouldn’t all be in the pods?” Quatre asked.

Wufei shook his head. “Medically – and procedurally – we should all already be in the tubes with Heero. The ship’s on auto-pilot and will get us to our mooring position as already charted.”

“As far as piece of mind is concerned, however…” Duo butt in, his legs drawn up to his chest where he sat on the chair next to Wufei, his chin resting on his bent knees.

“None of us _want_ to sleep,” Wufei admitted, “but we need to. Jumping at shadows isn’t helpful, and it’ll do none of us any good to arrive in Earth orbit more neurotic than we left.”

“We’ll take turns then,” Quatre suggested. “Three up, one down – not including Heero. That way someone’s always awake. I’ll take first watch.”

“Me too,” Trowa volunteered, leaning back in the chair. 

“We have about a hundred days until we’re in near-Earth orbit,” Wufei estimated. Turning to Duo, he added, “They’ll want you on comms for docking during that final leg. And if there’s any questions about our colleagues or Yosefi,” he continued, looking at Quatre, “you and I need to be able to respond.”

“Which means I’m in the tube last,” Trowa reasoned.

“If that’s alright.”

Trowa nodded. “That’s alright.”

“I’ll go first then,” Wufei said with a sigh. He stood and gestured for Duo to follow him back to the sleeping quarters. 

Quatre watched them go and let the silence stretch between him and Trowa for a time until he whispered at last, “This is likely to get ugly. When we get back.” The other man looked up at this, but said nothing, and so Quatre continued. “I’m going to try to protect you – all of you – from whatever judgment they hand down. None of this is your fault.”

“Quatre.” The word was gentle as it fell from the other man’s lips, but it rang of an incoming reprimand. Trowa didn’t disappoint. “You try to martyr yourself over this bullshit mission, you will have more than the ESUN Council to answer to, you understand that right? Wufei will fight tooth and nail to be indicted first, Heero will finally be able to demonstrate the _true_ extent of his not-so-open rebellion against the system, and Duo and I may just kidnap you.” 

This was not exactly the admonishment Quatre expected. His face must have betrayed him, because Trowa shifted to lean forward, his elbows resting heavy on the tabletop between them. “We always worked better as a team. Still do. This debacle was proof enough of that. You got us out. You helped get us all out. We’re in this together.”

Quatre watched him for a long time, and Trowa’s gaze met his with steady confidence. Finally, Quatre breathed what felt like relief.


	9. Epilogue

Une leaned back in her chair and sighed, rubbing her temples with her fingertips in a vain attempt to stave off yet another headache.

Five dossiers lay fanned out over her desk. Five case files, five accounts. All of them air-tight, and none that demonstrated any misconduct or poor judgment. She smirked – the Council would be displeased. Surely such extensive death and destruction must dictate a scape goat if a true villain could not be named. 

The team had operated within parameters that had been set by their chief, and battle deaths in the field were not entirely unknown, especially in the hinterlands. Yosefi – Winner’s intrepid business partner – had been an unfortunate loss in the final fight as the survivors made a bid for their escape. As her agents told it, he’d been attacked before they could reach him. The project itself had suffered catastrophic meltdown due to a lack of human attention to the facility, and the companies involved had insurance against such things, she was sure.

Of the creatures themselves – that all four of her agents and Winner himself had described in terrifying detail – there was no proof. It had been lost when the atmosphere engine went critical, and of the entity that had infiltrated the _EGERIA_ itself, there had been no physical evidence of any kind to support the five consistent statements that an unknown alien species had boarded the ship.

“Good,” Heero had snapped at his interview committee upon this revelation, uncharacteristically hostile, even for him. “That’s because Quatre and I blew it out the fucking airlock.” At the time, Une had wondered if he wore the fresh scarring on his face as proof to support their claims as well as a badge of honor. 

She had recommended medical leave for the lot of them – including Winner, though she had no real jurisdiction over his actions, as his team of lawyers had so dutifully reminded her. She had been tempted to suspend them as well, if only to appease the Council, but doing so would have caused more of a hassle than not. She knew that the Council members would jump at the opportunity for an internal investigation if given an opening, and there were things on the Preventers record that she would prefer kept quiet and out of the hands of the general public.

Such as the camera footage of the _EGERIA_ ’s hangar bay.


End file.
